Primary Care Coding Alert

This crosswalk helps you navigate CPT's 2009 newborn E/M section

The work of overhauling your normal newborn care ticket will go so much faster, thanks to this cheat sheet.

All newborn care and pediatric critical and intensive care services follow each other in this new-for-2009 streamlined system. You-ll need to update these codes:

2008 Code Description 2009 Code

99431 Initial hospital or birthing center care, per day, for evaluation and management 99460 of a normal newborn infant

99432 Initial care, per day, for evaluation and management of normal newborn infant 99461 seen in other than hospital or birthing center

99433 Subsequent hospital care, per day, for evaluation and management of normal 99462 newborn

99435 Inital hospital or birthing center care, per day, for evaluation and management 99463 of normal newborn infant admitted and discharged on the same date

You no longer have to jump straight to hourly critical care when a patient who meets CPT's critical care definition turns age 2. "The current pediatric critical care codes (99293 and 99294) run through 24 months of age," notes Kent Moore, director of financial accounting for the American Academy of Family Physicians in Leawood, Kan.

CPT 2009 introduces two older child daily critical care codes. Starting Jan. 1 for initial day inpatient critical care of a child age 2-5 years, you can use 99475 (Initial inpatient pediatric critical care, per day, for the evaluation and management of a critically ill infant or young child, 2 though 5 years of age). For subsequent day critical care, assign new code 99476 (Subsequent inpatient pediatric critical care, per day, for the evaluation and management of a critically ill infant or young child, 2 though 5 years of age).