Internal Medicine Coding Alert
Q No Longer Works for B
If you're coding hepatitis B vaccinations for Medicare patients, hold onto your claims. Medicare won't consider any claims for these vaccinations until April 1. You may remember that Medicare established new Q codes for the hepatitis B vaccine in November. Now CMS has recalled those codes Q3021, Q3022 and Q3023, which were to take effect in 2003 and has reactivated CPT codes 90740, 90743, 90744, 90746 and 90747 for the hepatitis B vaccine, effective Jan. 1, 2003. Medicare says it will take time to implement this revision, so you should hold your claims until April 1. You should note that another change made in November the elimination of codes 90723 and 90748 for hepatitis B is not affected by this revision.
Transmittal AB-02-185, which outlines this coding change, says that effective Jan. 13, 2003, claims with a date of service of Jan. 1-March 31, 2003, that contain CPT codes 90740, 90743, 90744, 90746 or 90747 will be returned to the provider. This also holds true for claims that use the now-deleted Q codes.
If you receive claims back or have new ones to file for hepatitis B vaccinations, hold the claims in your system and submit them to your carrier in April using the CPT codes, not the Q codes.
You can read Transmittal AB-02-185 online at http://cms.hhs.gov/manuals/pm_trans/AB02185.pdf.
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