Orthopedic Coding Alert

Never skip the underlying cause, infections, or dislocations.Appropriately capturing all your orthopedist's hip replacement services can depend on factors that you may overlook if you're not careful, such as the underlying cause for the replacement surgery and any infections or dislocations in the replaced hip. Read on to gain more insight into how to identify and code these aspects of this common procedure to recoup your full earned reimbursement. (For more on coding additional procedures with hip replacements, see "Part 2: Overcome These 3 Common Challenges In Hip Replacement Coding" in Orthopedic Coding Alert, Vol. 15, No. 2).Don't Forget the Underlying CauseIf you overlook the diagnosis when reporting hip replacements, you're omitting an important reimbursement component. This is especially so in cases where the hip replacement is being done for a congenital or developmental hip dislocation. These cases are often complicated enough to allow you to append modifier 22 (Unusual [...]