Neurosurgery Coding Alert

Question: I have an encounter form that states the neurosurgery provider performed an electroencephalogram (EEG) that lasted 64 minutes. Notes also indicate that the provider only recorded EEG time for 49 minutes; the rest of the 64 minutes was setup and takedown of the equipment. How should I report this EEG?

Missouri Subscriber

Answer: You'll most likely be reporting an extended EEG monitoring code, but you'll need to do a little more research to be sure of the exact code.

Do this: Go back and check the encounter notes again; if the provider only documented EEG recording time for 49 minutes, you'd report 95812 (Electroencephalogram [EEG] extended monitoring; 41-60 minutes) for the encounter. You'd use 95812 because even though the encounter time exceeded 60 minutes, the actual EEG time only lasted 49 minutes.

Remember that you cannot count any time that the provider spends setting up or taking down EEG equipment; the only EEG time you can count when coding is the minutes that the provider monitors and records the EEG results.

Exception: There is no time component for the following EEG codes, so you don't need to worry about how long these EEGs take:

• 95824, Electroencephalogram (EEG); cerebral death evaluation only
• 95827, ... all night recording