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Ob-Gyn Coding Alert

Reader Questions:

Make This Ectopic Pregnancy Distinction

Published on Sat Mar 08, 2008

Question: Patient has an ectopic pregnancy implanted at previous cesarean scar. The ob-gyn treated with methotrexate injection via ultrasonic guidance.-He chose to report CPT 96372/76942. Would I be better off using 59897? Georgia Subscriber Answer: You should not report 59897 (Unlisted fetal invasive procedure, including ultrasound guidance) because an ectopic pregnancy is not a fetal invasive procedure. You should use 59899 (Unlisted procedure, maternity care and delivery) instead. You can compare the procedure to 76942 (Ultrasonic guidance for needle placement [e.g., biopsy, aspiration, injection, localization device], imaging supervision and interpretation), but 96372 (Therapeutic, prophylactic or diagnostic injection [specify substance or drug]; subcutaneous or intramuscular) is just an intramuscular (IM) injection and the injection you mention was probably a bit more complicated than that. You may try comparing this procedure to an intralesional injection (11900, Injection, intralesional; up to and including 7 lesions).
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