Gastroenterology Coding Alert

Modifier 62 (Two surgeons): You should look to modifier 62 when your gastroenterologist participates in a surgery with another physician, typically of another specialty. For you to appropriately use this modifier, both surgeons should be working as primary surgeons for some part of the procedure and they must each have distinctly separate parts in the same CPT procedure, according to the modifier's code description. Each of the surgeons should document their own portion of the procedure.

Modifier 80 (Assistant surgeon): If your gastroenterologist  cts only as a "second pair of hands" in the operating room, assisting the primary surgeon, you should append modifier 80 to the procedure code. An assistant surgeon does not have to provide his own operative notes, but the primary surgeon should note the second physician's name as the assistant surgeon in his operative report.