Pathology/Lab Coding Alert

Question: Our lab received an order for a drug confirmation test for alcohol, salicylate and acetaminophen. We performed tests to quantify the presence of all three substances in the patient specimen. Can we report three units of the test code 80307?

Codify Subscriber

Answer: No, that would not be appropriate coding for this case, for two reasons.

First, if you’re billing appropriately with 80307 (Drug test[s], presumptive, any number of drug classes, any number of devices or procedures, by instrument chemistry analyzers [e.g., utilizing immunoassay (e.g., EIA, ELISA, EMIT, FPIA, IA, KIMS, RIA]), chromatography (e.g., GC, HPLC), and mass spectrometry either with or without chromatography, (e.g., DART, DESI, GC-MS, GC-MS/MS, LC-MS, LC-MS/MS, LDTD, MALDI, TOF] includes sample validation when performed, per date of service) you should never list more than one unit for the same patient on a single date of service. That’s true regardless of the number of drugs or drug classes involved in this test.

But the larger problem with the coding you suggest is that the test order is not for presumptive drug testing, which 80307 describes, but for drug confirmation. If your lab performs a confirmatory test as described in the CPT^® instructions for definitive drug testing, you should select the appropriate codes from that section. In your example, you’re testing for the alcohol drug class, and for two drugs in the non-opioid analgesics class. That means you should code the tests your lab performs using the definitive drug test codes as follows:

• 80320 — Alcohols
• 80329 — Analgesics, non-opioid; 1 or 2.