Neurology & Pain Management Coding Alert
EMG for MG Patients
Question: Notes indicate that the PM physician performed “needle EMG, 1 fiber.” The notes also state that the physician diagnosed “MG” after the encounter. Can you help me decipher these notes and tell me which CPT® and ICD-10 codes I should report? Minnesota Subscriber Answer: Based on the information you provide, it seems that the physician performed a needle electromyography (EMG) and diagnosed myasthenia gravis (MG). On the claim, you’d report 95872 (Needle electromyography using single fiber electrode, with quantitative measurement of jitter, blocking and/or fiber density, any/all sites of each muscle studied) with 358.0X (Myasthenia gravis) appended to represent the patient’s MG.> Explanation: >Check out this definition of single-fiber EMG, and maybe these clues can help you identify needle EMGs more quickly: “Single fiber needle electromyography is a selective EMG recording technique that allows the identification of electrical activity from an individual muscle fiber. In this procedure, the provider uses a special electrode that has a small recording surface that allows measuring electrical activity from the selected muscle fiber. He measures the parameters like jitter and blocking with or without fiber density at one or more sites of the muscle studied.”>
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