Neurosurgery Coding Alert

Question: Our physician inserted a lumbar drain and wants to leave it in place for several days. Can we list 62272 as the procedure code? What should we report for daily inpatient visits from the physician? Is it correct to submit code 01996 for the daily management of the drain?

Washington Subscriber

Answer:  You can report code 62272 (Spinal puncture, therapeutic, for drainage of cerebrospinal fluid [by needle or catheter]) for lumbar drain. This code doesn’t have any associated global days. 

Report daily management: The daily management code 01996 (Daily hospital management of epidural or subarachnoid continuous drug administration) sometimes is appropriate for follow-up care of the drain, but doesn’t apply in this situation because it refers to management of a continuous infusion of a medication. Your physician is instead checking the functioning of the lumbar cerebral spinal fluid drain.

If the physician meets the documentation requirements, then you can bill the appropriate E/M code for a subsequent hospital care visit, 99231 (Subsequent hospital care, per day, for the evaluation and management of a patient, which requires at least 2 of these 3 key components….. Typically, 15 minutes are spent at the bedside and on the patient’s hospital floor or unit)-99233 (……Typically, 35 minutes are spent at the bedside and on the patient’s hospital floor or unit).