General Surgery Coding Alert

Change ‘malignant neoplasm’ to ‘sarcoma’ for radical soft tissue resections.

General surgery practices, beware: You have nearly 170 code changes, additions, and deletions in CPT^® 2014 that you’ll need to learn to use. That’s huge, so we want to help you get going before Jan. 1, 2014 rolls around.

Get Started With This Overview

You can look to General Surgery Coding Alert for lots of specific, “how-to” instruction on the new codes, such as “Look for New Breast Localization and Biopsy Codes Next Year” on page 83 of this issue.

But you face so many changes this year that we decided to give you a quick primer to help you see the big picture. Look to future issues of General Surgery Coding Alert for more specific explanation of each of these other changes:

• See how “sarcoma” changes more than 20 soft tissue radical resection codes in the range 21015-23333, 24077-24079, and 25077-28047.
• Implement eight new codes for endovascular aneurysm repair: 38481-38484
• Clarify vascular stent and embolization coding as CPT^® 2014 replaces six codes (37204-37210) with nine new options (37217-37244) 
• Greet the massive digestive system coding overhaul with more than 80 code additions, revisions, and deletions in the 40000 level codes. These include changes to how you’ll report esophagoscopy, esophagogastroduodenoscopy, endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP), and image-guided fluid collection drainage by catheter, among others.