Anesthesia Coding Alert

Question: My pain management specialist inserted a catheter for a continuous femoral nerve block for acute postoperative pain management for a patient who had an open reduction internal  fixation (ORIF) for a distal femur fracture. His notes indicate he checked in on the patient for two days to manage the continuous infusion. Can I separately report the catheter insertion? New Jersey Subscriber Answer: You can bill for the insertion of continuous femoral infusion catheter separately, as long as your provider did not use it as part of the anesthesia for the ORIF. Here's how: If your specialist placed the catheter for postoperative pain management, you would report 64448 (Injection, anesthetic agent; femoral nerve, continuous infusion by catheter [including catheter placement]). The Correct Coding Initiative (CCI) edits bundle 64448 as a column 2 code into the majority of the anesthesia services codes, including 01360 (Anesthesia for all open procedures on lower [...]