Cardiology Coding Alert

Question: Should we expect to see a new echocardiographic code in 2022?

Montana Subscriber

Answer: Yes. We will gain new add-on echo code +93319 (3D echocardiographic imaging and postprocessing during transesophageal echocardiography, or during transthoracic echocardiography for congenital cardiac anomalies, for the assessment of cardiac structure(s) (eg, cardiac chambers and valves, left atrial appendage, interatrial septum,interventricular septum) and function, when performed (List separately in addition to code for echocardiographic imaging)) next year.

Note: You should report 93319 in conjunction with the following codes:

• 93303 (Transthoracic echocardiography for congenital cardiac anomalies; complete) and 93304 (… follow-up or limited study)
• 93312 (Echocardiography, transesophageal, real-time with image documentation (2D) (with or without M-mode recording); including probe placement, image acquisition, interpretation and report) and 93314 (… image acquisition, interpretation and report only)
• 93315 (Transesophageal echocardiography for congenital cardiac anomalies; including probe placement, image acquisition, interpretation and report) and 93317 (… image acquisition, interpretation and report only)

Important: You should never report +93319 in conjunction with codes 76376 (3D rendering with interpretation and reporting of computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound, or other tomographic modality with image postprocessing under concurrent supervision; not requiring image postprocessing on an independent workstation) and 76377 (… requiring image postprocessing on an independent workstation), according to the CPT^® guidelines.

You should also never report +93319 in conjunction with +93325 (Doppler echocardiography color flow velocity mapping (List separately in addition to codes for echocardiography)), or echo code 93355.