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Pathology/Lab Coding Alert

Medicare Billing:

Distinguish Diagnostic vs. Screening Pap Test Procedure Codes

Published on Mon Oct 10, 2011

Method leads HCPCS or CPT® choices.CPT® provides 14 codes to describe the lab's technical work for Pap tests -- but you can't use any of them for Medicare beneficiaries' screening Pap tests. Instead, you'll have to use seven "parallel" HCPCS Level II codes for Medicare screening Pap tests. Labs can choose the proper code from either code set based the lab and reporting method. Use the following chart to learn the CPT/HCPCS code correspondence for diagnostic and screening Pap tests:
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