Pathology/Lab Coding Alert

Question: Our lab performs an antigen immunoassay test for SARS-CoV-2 plus influenza A and B. Should we report this as 87451?

Texas Subscriber

Answer: CPT^® recently announced a new code that describes the service you indicated in your question: 87428 (Infectious agent antigen detection by immunoassay technique, (eg, enzyme immunoassay [EIA], enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay [ELISA], fluorescence immunoassay [FIA], immunochemiluminometric assay [IMCA]) qualitative or semiquantitative; severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (eg, SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19]) and influenza virus types A and B). The code was effective Nov. 10, 2020.

This test allows clinicians to choose a rapid antigen immunoassay test to help determine if a patient’s symptoms are due to COVID-19 from a SARS-CoV-2 infection, or the flu from an influenza virus infection. Other multiplex tests for these organisms use nucleic acid target analysis, and typically do not provide rapid results.

Prior to introducing this code, your code suggestion would have been correct: 87451 (Infectious agent antigen detection by immunoassay technique, (eg, enzyme immunoassay [EIA], enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay [ELISA], fluorescence immunoassay [FIA], immunochemiluminometric assay [IMCA]) qualitative or semiquantitative; polyvalent for multiple organisms, each polyvalent antiserum).