Neurosurgery Coding Alert

Nugget: Coding complex spine surgeries using the following five tips will assist in properly billing Medicare and third-party insurance companies for optimum payment. Claims for spine surgery can be highly complex, and many coding and procedural practices can cause reductions, denials, or delays by insurance carriers. The following suggestions may help to increase pay ups for spine surgery claims. 1. Billing for bone graft. A common spinal coding error is not billing for the bone graft when a neurosurgeon performs an arthrodesis (for example, 22612, arthrodesis, posterior or posterolateral technique, single level; lumbar [with or without lateral transverse technique]) or inserts instrumentation (for example, 22842, posterior segmental instrumentation [e.g., pedicle fixation, dual rods with multiple hooks and sublaminar wires]; 3 to 6 vertebral segments), says Ginger Adkins, CPC, account manager for five neurosurgeons at the Neurosurgical Medical Clinic in San Diego. Adkins says that codes 20930 (allograft for spine surgery [...]