Wiki Immunohistochemistry coding help

[c.cannon]

With the change now underway for 2015 and understanding the revised coding set for CPT 88342/88341/88344 - I'm not sure how one would code the following:

Specimen #1 - immunostains for S-100 and melan A
Specimen #2 - immunostains for Ki67 and melan A

I'm stuck since the CPT book clearly indicates that you can only bill 1 unit of the above per specimen.

This was coded by path as 88342; 88341; 88342; 88341 - this doesn't seem right and that it would reject as the second set being a duplicate.

So should it be coded as 88342 x 2 and 88341 x 2?

Can someone shed some insight on this?

 

[danachock]

Stain coding

Hi,

Specimen #1 - immunostains for S-100 and melan A(Mart 1)
Specimen #2 - immunostains for Ki67 and melan A(Mart 1)

Here are the two examples you provided
For Specimen A for S-100 bill 88342, and 88341
For Specimen B for Ki67 bill 88360 and 88342 (88342 will need a modifier 59) and several insurance companies will deny it (BCBS and Medica especially) and you will need to appeal it sending in a copy of the pathology report with which stains were performed.
Thanks,

Dana Chock, CPC, CCA, CANPC, CHONC, CPMA, CPB
Anesthesia, Pathology, and Laboratory coder