Practice Management Alert

Answer: When you’re looking at guidance for selecting CPT^® codes for your procedures, you need to be able to navigate beyond just the code.

A lot of procedures have a diagnostic and then surgical component, and these are more obviously separate procedures because of these designations. But sometimes it’s more confusing, especially when a single procedure may have different rules for different sites, especially in situations involving laterality. So go deep in your CPT^® books, and don’t forget to look at CPT^® Assistant publications, either.

“You have to understand the wording, the context, and make sure when you see certain services that have rules on the, you know all of the rules also surrounding them,” says Terry Fletcher, BS, CPC, CCC, CEMC, SCP-CA, ACS-CA, CCS-P, CCS, CMSCS, CMC, QMGC, QMCRC, QMPM, CEO/president at Terry Fletcher Consulting Inc. and podcaster at The CodeCast Podcast.