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Anesthesia Coding Alert

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Choosing Anesthesia for Spinal Hardware Insertion

Published on Mon Jun 16, 2014

Question: The Anesthesiologist personally provided anesthesia service for a patient undergoing spinal surgery including laminectomy and insertion of Harrington rods. The patient is relatively healthy other than spinal condition. What CPT® code along with the appropriate physical status modifier and modifier identifying the provider should use?

Michigan Subscriber 

Answer: The most likely code to report is 00670 (Anesthesia for extensive spine and spinal cord procedures [e.g., spinal instrumentation or vascular procedures]) because it’s for anesthesia during extensive spine procedures (such as those including spinal instrumentation like Harrington rod insertion). It has a base unit value of 13. 
 
If the patient is in good health, the physical status modifier would be P1 (A normal healthy patient). 
 
We can’t pinpoint the anesthesiologist’s work modifier without knowing about other concurrent cases. If he performed anesthesia during this case and wasn’t medically directing or medically supervising any other anesthesia providers at the time, you would report HCPCS modifier AA (Anesthesia service performed personally by anesthesiologist). 

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