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General Surgery Coding Alert

ICD-9 2011:

Rev Up Your BMI 'V' Codes to Validate Bariatric Surgery

Published on Fri Apr 02, 2010

Show medical necessity with new 'supplemental factors' codes.Your general surgery practice will have some new tools to explain the reason for a procedure when the latest ICD-9 codes become effective Oct. 1.CMS recently published the full list of over 130 new diagnosis codes in the Federal Register, and our experts will guide you through the list to find the codes that impact your practice.Surprise: More than a third of the new codes can be found in the "V" code section. That's where you'll find the new codes that impact general surgeons the most.Expanded BMI Helps Bariatric Surgery, E/M LevelICD-9 has "expanded the body mass index (BMI) codes to demonstrate higher BMIs with five new codes," notes Barbara J. Cobuzzi, MBA, CPC, CPC-H, CPC-P, CENTC, CHCC, with CRN Healthcare Solutions in Tinton Falls, N.J.You'll need to stop using V85.4 (Body Mass Index 40 and over, adult) on Oct. 1 and start [...]
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