Anesthesia Coding Alert

Question: Is it appropriate to use modifier 58 on anesthesia encounters when the surgeon plans to return to the OR for a staged procedure?

Mississippi Subscriber

Answer: Global surgery modifiers are not appropriate for anesthesia. According to the CPT^® definition, modifier 58 represents “Staged or related procedure or service by the same physician during the post-operative period.” Because of this, it would only be appropriate for the surgeon doing the procedure to report modifier 58 if she is within the global period of a surgery that she themselves performed. Modifier 58 cannot be appended to anesthesia codes or reported by the anesthesiologist since he is a different provider of a different specialty.

Also note: The global surgery rules indicate that “services of other physicians related to the surgery” are excluded from the global surgery package. By extension, there would be no reason to append a modifier to an anesthesia service.