Revenue Cycle Insider

Question: A patient presented with 20 skin tags on multiple areas of the body. The provider did a complete examination of the skin and then discussed removal of the skin tags on the patient’s shoulders, back, and underarms. After obtaining consent from the patient, the physician excised all of the skin tags with surgical scissors.

Which lesion excision code should I use for the procedure?

Wyoming Subscriber

Answer: You won’t use a lesion excision code at all for this procedure. Instead, you’ll turn to the skin tag removal codes in the CPT^® code set:

• 11200 (Removal of skin tags, multiple fibrocutaneous tags, any area; up to and including 15 lesions)
• +11201 (… each additional 10 lesions, or part thereof (List separately in addition to code for primary procedure))

Assign 11200 to report the surgical excision of the first 15 skin tags; then, you’ll assign +11201 to report the removal of the remaining five skin tags. Add-on code +11201 covers the removal of up to 10 lesions after the initial 15 reported by 11200. The code descriptor features the wording, “or part thereof,” meaning that the add-on code covers the removal of any number of skin tags up to 10.

Mike Shaughnessy, BA, CPC, Development Editor, AAPC