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General Surgery Coding Alert

3 Tips Help You Navigate CCI 16.0 Lap, Excision Limitations

Published on Fri Jan 01, 2010

Distinguish skin and lymph procedures from new soft tissue codes to ensure payment. Before you're done prepping to use the new CPT 2010 general surgery codes, the latest edition of Medicare's Correct Coding Initiative (CCI) is already making some code pairings impossible. CCI released version 16.0, effective Jan. 1, which includes 24,060 new active pairs and 869 modifier changes, according to Frank D. Cohen, MPA, MBB, senior analyst with MIT Solutions. Most of the code pairings -- and deletions -- affect codes that debuted or exited in CPT 2010. Round up all the general surgery edits you need to know with just three expert tips. Tip 1: Heed Thousands of Soft Tissue Tumor Excision Bundles With 72 new/revised codes for soft tumor excisions and resections, CCI found plenty of fodder for edit pairs that will impact your practice. Mutually exclusive edit pairs -- those that a physician would not reasonably performat the same [...]
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