Neurology & Pain Management Coding Alert

Answer: Catherine A. Brink, CMM, CPC, president of Healthcare Resources Management Inc., a practice management and reimbursement consulting firm in Spring Lake, N.J., that consults with several neurology practices, states that, according to CPT 2000, code 95904 is used to report nerve conduction, amplitude and latency/velocity study, each nerve; sensory or mixed. Therefore, 95904 is the correct code to report a sensory nerve conduction study of the median and ulnar nerves.

Neil Busis, MD, chief of the division of neurology and director of the neurodiagnostic laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center at Shadyside in Pittsburgh, says that as long as a nerve conduction study reports either latency or conduction velocity and amplitude, the full nerve conduction velocity code can be used. Latency/velocity means latency or velocity, not latency and velocity.

The parenthetical statement in CPT 2000 under codes 95900 through 95904 states, Report 95900, 95903, and/or 95904 only once when multiple sites on the same nerve are stimulated or recorded. This applies to the appropriate way to code a nerve conduction study of sensory nerve or motor nerve when there are multiple sites on the same nerve that are stimulated. As per CPT 2000, these codes should be listed only once, no matter how many points on the same nerve are stimulated.