Orthopedic Coding Alert

Hint: Get to the right code by confirming what your surgeon drained.Your surgeon may perform incision and drainage procedures in the shoulder area to treat an abscess, hematoma, infected bursa, or bone abscess. You'll stand a much better chance of hitting the right codes for these services if you can identify what your surgeon actually drained. Key: Your surgeon's approach may be similar, but the tissues incised and the depth of dissection to reach the pus or blood determines how you can report the drainage.Turn To Single Code for Blood or PusShoulder abscesses are a common postoperative complication. In this case, your surgeon may not make a new incision but may rather prefer to drain the abscess through the existing incision. For example, you may read that around three weeks after a shoulder surgery, your surgeon returned the patient to the operating theater to drain an abscess. You will report [...]