Radiology Coding Alert

Question: How can we report venous sampling and catheterization? Can we separately report radiological supervision with venous sampling? How can we report multiple venous sampling in an organ?

Kentucky Subscriber

Answer: For venous sampling and catheterization, you report code 36500 (Venous catheterization for selective organ blood sampling). This code describes the placement of a catheter selectively in to the venous drainage of an organ. The sampling of blood may be done for laboratory evaluation. You report code 36500 per organ sampled.

When reporting code 36500, you need to remember the following:

When reporting code 36500, you do not separately report the selective placement of catheter into the venous system. The services of code 36011 (Selective catheter placement, venous system; first order branch [e.g., renal vein, jugular vein]) are bundled in code 36500.

You report code 36500 only once if your physician samples multiple veins of a single organ, for example, sampling of the upper, middle, and lower pole veins of a single kidney.

For radiological supervision and interpretation, you submit code 75893 (Venous sampling through catheter, with or without angiography [e.g., for parathyroid hormone, rennin], radiological supervision and interpretation) in addition to code 36500 per organ sampled. The code 75893 includes all imaging related to the venous sampling including any diagnostic venography prior to and after sampling.

Your physician will often do bilateral venous sampling. This enables comparison of blood samples from paired organs. You will however, not report code 36500 twice for bilateral sampling.