Primary Care Coding Alert

Question: Eight days after an initial wart freezing, the patient returns, and the physician freezes another wart. Is the second procedure bundled into the first, or can we report it with a modifier?

Oregon Subscriber

Answer: You may be able to report the second occurrence of 17110 (Destruction [e.g., laser surgery, electrosurgery, cryosurgery, chemosurgery, surgical curettement], of benign lesions other than skin tags or cutaneous vascular proliferative lesions; up to 14 lesions) if the documentation specifies that the treatment is for a different wart than the first procedure.

Medicare assigns 17110 a 10-day global period, so the patient in this case definitely had a second procedure within the global period of the first.

Append modifier 79 (Unplanned procedure or service by the same physician during the postoperative period) to the second occurrence of 17110 in this situation.