Wiki Adult Physical with chronic condition follow-up

[Andrea Bowers]

My providers have a habit of when a patient schedules a physical exam (particularly patients over age 50) of also following up on their chronic conditions such as hypertension, lipids, cholesterol as they are reviewing the lab results at this visit. We are being denied by the carriers with our Z00.00 code. These are abnormal but not new findings. They are chronic conditions. I have tried and tried asking them to do one or the other - preventive services or routine periodic follow-up at a visit but not both. This is falling on deaf ears.

What is the answer? Should I be using the Z00.01 with the codes for the chronic conditions?

Andrea Bowers
Hagerstown

 

[ollielooya]

Andrea, you are not alone. There was extensive discussion on the same topic here in the forum. You might want to check it out. We're still awaiting response from AAPC at the conclusion of the thread, but I found it to be very enlightening.

https://www.aapc.com/memberarea/forums/showthread.php?t=127800

But to answer your question, no--based on the description of the code itself Z00.01 would not be appropriate to use based on the "excludes note". This is how I see it.