Anesthesia Coding Alert

It's easy to get so swamped by the new Correct Coding Initiative (CCI) bundlings each quarter that you overlook the deletions. But you should also look at these, especially considering that two of the non-mutually exclusive deletions in CCI 9.0 are of particular interest to anesthesia and pain management providers.

The affected pairs both include 76003 (Fluoroscopic guidance for needle placement [e.g., biopsy, aspiration, injection, localization device]). CCI previously bundled this code with trigger-point codes 20552 (Injection[s]; single or multiple trigger point[s], one or two muscles) and 20553 ( single or multiple trigger point[s], three or more muscles). Now that CCI has published it as an edit deletion, providers can bill both codes when fluoro-scopic guidance is used for trigger-point injections.