Oncology & Hematology Coding Alert

Flowsheets may become your new best friend

The 2006 Demonstration Project offers up cash for reporting three extra G codes alongside oncology E/Ms. Make this the fastest $23 you-ve ever earned by following these tips.

1. Report one code each from G9050 to G9055 (primary focus of visit), G9056 to G9062 (adherence to practice guidelines), and G9063 to G9130 (disease status), says Sue Irwin with North Coast Electronic Billing in Elyria, Ohio.

2. Set up a charge sheet for your doctors that will let them use check marks to respond to the questions in the new 2006 cancer care demonstration project.

3. Write the source of the guidelines the oncologist uses to treat the patient's cancer in the comment line on the bill and in the patient's chart, says Kimberly Branson, coding manager with Nashville Oncology Associates
in Tennessee.

Guidelines could be from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, or both. You could also mark -no guideline available- or -clinical trial,- as applicable. But if you use one of ASCO's worksheets, you can just have the physician circle the correct set of guidelines, Branson says. (Find CMS- sample documentation flowsheet at www.cms.hhs.gov/MedlearnMattersArticles/downloads/SE0588.pdf.)

4. List the disease state when the patient was first diagnosed for many of the cancers, not the current state, Branson says. For example, for lung cancer, the form asks for -extent of disease originally established,- from T1 through T3, before the patient received any treatment.

5. Set up a process to keep track of cancer patients coming in who might qualify for the program: The day before one of those patients comes in, put the appropriate template form into the patient's chart. Some software vendors have already set up programs to help you deal with the demonstration project.