Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

2 requirements open the door to adding on 44950 to 44970. Do you assume payers will bundle appendectomies into most other abdominal procedures? Automatically skipping over the appendectomy codes for every case could cost your surgeon approximately $80 to $779 in deserved reimbursement. There are circumstances when you can -- and should -- separately report appendectomy procedures. Here's how to capture added pay without unbundling. 'Healthy' Removal = No Pay Medicare and most other payers will not pay separately for the removal of a healthy appendix. Reasoning: Surgeons may perform appendectomies during the course of more extensive abdominal procedures. Sometimes, the surgeon will even remove a healthy appendix simply because he already has the patient's abdomen open and removing the appendix eliminates a potential health problem down the road. In fact, finding appendicitis in a patient during the course of another procedure is not a common occurrence, experts say. Example: Your surgeon [...]