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Anesthesia Coding Alert

Reader Question:

Regional Nerve Block

Published on Sun Apr 01, 2001

Question: If our anesthesiologist performs a regional nerve block in addition to general anesthesia during the procedure, can we bill the regional block separately and if so, how?

California Subscriber

Answer: Billing the nerve block (64420*-64450*) depends on whether it was administered for delivering anesthesia during the procedure or for postoperative pain management. If it was for postoperative pain management, you just change the diagnosis code to pain and append modifier -59 to indicate a separate and distinct procedural service.
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