Wiki Learning Spinal Cases

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One way is to search thru the Chapter Meetings on the AAPC site, thru these meetings you can make virtual connections with others in your Specialty.
 

It can be confusing and sometimes the cases are very large. If you have a senior coder or supervisor that has experience and can help you ask for mentoring. Not sure your work scenario, but if you can, start with basic cases such as discectomy and one level lamis. When I taught spine coding I would start people with that and single level fusions as they learned the anatomy and procedures and then progress them to bigger cases. At the end of training we would do big multi-level fusions and anterior posterior cases and revisions. Anatomy is going to be very important to learn (as with any orthopedic/spine/neuro).
 
amyjph said:

It can be confusing and sometimes the cases are very large. If you have a senior coder or supervisor that has experience and can help you ask for mentoring. Not sure your work scenario, but if you can, start with basic cases such as discectomy and one level lamis. When I taught spine coding I would start people with that and single level fusions as they learned the anatomy and procedures and then progress them to bigger cases. At the end of training we would do big multi-level fusions and anterior posterior cases and revisions. Anatomy is going to be very important to learn (as with any orthopedic/spine/neuro).
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Thanks so much for the resources! I am a pre-service coder which makes things that much harder with such little info to go off of. I have asked for additional training at work and listened to a handful of webinars. I will take a look at your resources. We do a variety of spinal cases, ACDFs, ALIFs, decompressions and fusions, etc.
 
AZiegler18 said:
Thanks so much for the resources! I am a pre-service coder which makes things that much harder with such little info to go off of. I have asked for additional training at work and listened to a handful of webinars. I will take a look at your resources. We do a variety of spinal cases, ACDFs, ALIFs, decompressions and fusions, etc.
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I see, you mean coding for prior auth on the order? It would be difficult to do that without having coded actual cases. Spine docs are usually pretty good at documentation though, so it should be pretty clear what the plan is. See if you can practice on some op notes to actually code them and compare to what was billed. You could have a little "cheat sheet" to go by if you are adding codes to an order for pre-auth. Talk to the providers (if you can). Find out what the top five or ten cases they do are. Most times, they will be pretty similar. For example if they do a lot of TLIFs you would probably have 22633, 22634, 22614 (possibly), 22853, 22842 (depending on the # of levels the quantity will change). They might add in 63042, etc.
ACDF will be pretty standard depending on the # of levels.
It would be more complex if they do a lot of revisions and extensions of prior fusions.
If they do a lot of lumbar hemis you'll just see 63030, 63035. Lami for stenosis you'll see a lot of 63047.
Good luck!
 
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