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General Surgery Coding Alert

CCI 17.1:

49491-49580: Include 'Usual and Necessary' Services in Hernia Repair

Published on Mon Apr 18, 2011

'Standards of surgical practice' lead edit pairs for many procedures.Infusions, punctures, blocks, heart/lung monitoring, radiology ... it's all part of the surgical package, according to Medicare. Just to make sure you believe it, the latest edition of Correct Coding Initiative (CCI), effective April 1, intends to block many surgical code pairings with these services.The Correct Coding Initiative (CCI) recently released version 17.1, revealing 11,831 new edit pairs and 346 terminations, said Frank D. Cohen, MPA, MBB, senior analyst with MIT Solutions, Inc., in a March 17 statement.That's a large number of new edit pairs for the second quarter, which typically slackens after adding many new-code pairs in the first quarter."Most of the new edit pairs that impact general surgery practices involve bundling ancillary services that are typically part of the surgical procedure," says Marcella Bucknam, CPC, CCS-P, CPC-H, CCS, CPC-P, COBGC, CCC, manager of compliance education for the University of [...]
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