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Oncology & Hematology Coding Alert

Reader Questions:

Nix Treatment Plan Code for Nuclear Medicine

Published on Thu Jun 28, 2007

Question: Should I report a clinical treatment plan code for a strontium injection?

Washington Subscriber Answer: No. Therapeutic nuclear medicine service codes include services such as planning and dose assay. You should not report the following services separately:
 
- clinical treatment planning (such as 77261, Therapeutic radiology treatment planning; simple)

 - handling the radiopharmaceutical (77790, Supervision, handling, loading of radiation source)

 - dosimetry (such as 77300, Basic radiation dosimetry calculation -). Instead, you should report the strontium injection with 79101 (Radiopharmaceutical therapy, by intravenous administration), which the physician most likely ordered to help patients with bone metastasis.
 
If your facility bears the cost of the drug, you should also report A9600 (Strontium Sr-89 chloride, therapeutic, per millicurie).
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