Wiki Benign vs malignant

[lalalisa]

Patient came to Plastic surgeon after dermatologist did a punch biopsy for a lesion that came back suspiscious for squamous cell ca. Plastic surgeon toook pt to O.R and removed the lesion and did a skin graft. The doc coded it as 11604,15100 with 173.42 fro dx.

The path came back and showed it to be seborrheic keratosis with no evidence of malignancy. So I was changing the codes to 11404,15100 with 702.19.

Seems like a silly question, but isnt my way the correct way to code it?

thank you!

 

[mitchellde]

Yes you are correct the provider needs to be informed that an uncertain dx such as "suspicious" cannot be coded by provider or outpatient facility.