Anesthesia Coding Alert

Question: Is transesophageal echocardiography included in basic anesthesia administration services?

Alabama Subscriber

Answer: If your payer applies Correct Coding Initiative (CCI) edits, you will be able to bill for intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) codes, provided the service is diagnostic and not for monitoring. Payers who apply CCI allow providers to bill for the probe placement when they perform and document a diagnostic TEE during anesthesia.

What to do: To report the diagnostic service, look to TEE codes 93312-93316. And append modifier 59 (Distinct procedural service) to the TEE code to override edits bundling TEE into anesthesia.

CPT® says: According to AMA's CPT Assistant (March 2006), you should be able to report your anesthesiologist's placement of intra-arterial lines, central venous lines, and pulmonary artery catheters (which are all forms of invasive monitoring), as well as TEE procedures, separately from basic anesthesia.

Some carriers do not follow the CCI edits and will pay separately for monitoring TEE.