Pathology/Lab Coding Alert

Clear V72.6x hurdle with ICD-9, coverage guidelines. Adding five new ICD-9 2010 laboratory examination V codes to your requisition form might make life easy for your physician clients, but it won't help you get paid for lab work. Here's why: ICD-9 guidelines and direction from sources such as Medicare's laboratory National Coverage Determinations (NCDs) make it clear -- you need to code the patient diagnosis that prompts a lab-test order. "You should encourage physicians to continue to order lab tests with condition codes rather than relying on new codes such as V72.63 (Pre-procedural laboratory examination), if you want to avoid denials" says William Dettwyler, MT-AMT, president of Codus Medicus, a laboratory coding consulting firm in Salem, Ore. Identify Lab Test Encounters Prior to ICD-9 2010, you had no way to identify encounters for laboratory tests as part of general physical exams or for preparation for a procedure or treatment, according to [...]