Anesthesia Coding Alert

Watch patient age, procedure description when identifying venous access devices.CPT® includes 13 codes for central venous catheter insertion (36555-36571), which gives you a wealth of choices to weed through. The next time your anesthesiologist inserts one of these lines during surgery, ask yourself five questions to narrow your options to the correct code. 1. How Many Access Points? In the (relatively uncommon) case when the physician inserts a tunneled CVA (central venous access) device requiring two catheters with two different access sites (also known as a Tesio catheter), you can narrow your code selection to just two codes: 36565 -- Insertion of tunneled centrally inserted central venous access device, requiring 2 catheters via 2 separate venous access sites; without subcutaneous port or pump (eg, Tesio type catheter)36566 -- Insertion of tunneled centrally inserted central venous access device, requiring 2 catheters via 2 separate venous access sites; with subcutaneous port(s). "Using two catheters [...]