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General Surgery Coding Alert

CCI 18.0:

15271-+15278 and Beyond: Navigate Edit Pairs to Optimize Pay

Published on Thu Jan 19, 2012

Identify standard surgical services to steer through bundle traps. Not one new CPT® 2012 code that you're likely to use in your general surgery practice escapes the latest edition of Medicare's Correct Coding Initiative (CCI). CCI released version 18.0, effective Jan. 1, revealing 15,530 new active pairs and 6,197 code pair terminations, according to Frank D. Cohen, MPA, MBB, senior analyst with Frank Cohen Group, LLC. From new skin to abdominal surgical codes, make sure you comply with the following CCI edits when you bill new CPT® 2012 codes. Infusions, Imaging, and Anesthesia Included Medicare specifies that when you bill a surgical code, the procedure includes all intraoperative services that are usual and necessary parts of the surgery. That's why CCI 18.0 contains thousands of new edit pairs with the following CPT® 2012 codes that you might use in your surgical practice this year: 15271-+15278 -- Application of skin substitute graft [...]
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