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Anesthesia Coding Alert

CCI 17.2:

Think Twice Before Reporting Neonatal Hypothermia During Heart Procedures

Published on Tue Aug 02, 2011

Latest CCI edits weigh in on hypothermia, disallow certain HCPCS codes with joint, somatic nerve injections. If your anesthesiologist performs controlled hypothermia during neonatal heart surgery cases, only report the anesthesia code, not the "T" code for hypothermia. The hypothermia change (plus edits related to injection procedures) went into effect July 1, thanks to the latest round of Correct Coding Initiative (CCI) edits. Anesthesia Overrides Hypothermia Every edit pair related to anesthesia focuses on codes 0260T (Total body systemic hypothermia, per day, in the neonate 28 days of age or younger) and 0261T (Selective head hypothermia, per day, in the neonate 28 days of age or younger). The edits related to 0260T and 0261T use the explanation "Misuse of column two code with column one code." CCI 17.2 outlines that you should not report neonatal hypothermia codes with the cardiac anesthesia codes: 00560 -- Anesthesia for procedures on heart, pericardial sac, [...]
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