Neurosurgery Coding Alert

Question: I am confused about the CPT^® guidelines for new codes 95983 and +95984. Can you help me understand them?

Ohio Subscriber

Answer: If the surgeon performs the electronic analysis with programming of an implanted brain neurostimulator pulse generator/transmitter, then you would report new codes 95983 (Electronic analysis of implanted neurostimulator pulse generator/transmitter (eg, contact group[s], interleaving, amplitude, pulse width, frequency [Hz], on/off cycling, burst, magnet mode, dose lockout, patient selectable parameters, responsive neurostimulation, detection algorithms, closed loop parameters, and passive parameters) by physician or other qualified health care professional; with brain neurostimulator pulse generator/transmitter programming, first 15 minutes face-to-face time with physician or other qualified health care professional) and +95984 (… each additional 15 minutes face-to-face time with physician or other qualified health care professional (List separately in addition to code for primary procedure))

For the first 15 minutes of physician or qualified health care professional face-to-face time for analysis and programming, you should report 95983. You would then report +95984 for each additional 15 minutes.

Don’t miss: CPT^® instructions specifically state that when reporting 95983 and +95984, if the physician or other qualified health care professional face-to-face time is less than eight minutes, you cannot report this service separately.

For example: The surgeon performs an electronic analysis of an implanted brain neurostimulator pulse generator/transmitter. He spends six minutes on this service. In this case, the analysis is not separately reportable because it lasted less than eight minutes.

However, consider if the surgeon instead performed the analysis for 11 minutes. In this case, the service would be considered reportable, and you would submit 95983 X 1 on your claim. 

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