Wiki Help on bilateral xrays

[encomma-watson]

I have a question, I work in a internal medicine office and we do xrays. Lately in the encounters that I see, we have bilateral hips or bilateral knee xrays. I know that a 50 modifer need to be on the xray with lt or rt, am I coding this correctely. Please help

 

[munirajarathinavelp]

The general law for coding bilateral (if same kind and number of views taken bilaterally) X- rays is, take for example BILATERAL KNEE 3 VIEWS EACH, then the coding would be

73562 - 50
or
73562-RT
73562-LT
or
73562 with 2 units.

you can code them with either options, No need of appending RT and LT modifiers when you append 50 modifier.

Hope this helps!

 

[kbazarte@yahoo.com]

in addition to the above posts there are some procedures, that bilat is inclusive
i.e. bilat hips 73520 rad exam, hips, bilat, minimum of 2 views, each hip, including ap view of the pelvis. no modifier needed

 

[jgf-CPC]

Depending upon the payor we use RT and LT the most at our centers. Medicare here prefers the 50 mod but then BCBS prefers the Rt and LT