Pediatric Coding Alert

Hint: Gathering upfront pay and watching E/Ms make a difference.Children need physicals to participate in their favorite sports year round, but the demand can grow with warm weather approaching. Ideally, the need for sports physicals should provide the opportunity to offer complete age-appropriate medical exams following the American Academy of Pediatrician's Bright Futures Guidelines. If your practice runs into reimbursement obstacles for full-scale physicals, however, follow our experts' advice to code correctly and still stay in the game.Tackle Coverage IssuesChoosing the diagnosis code for a sports physical is fairly easy. You'll use V70.3 (Other medical examination for administrative purposes).Choosing the best CPT code for a sports physical is a bit trickier. "I struggle with this because the service rendered is preventive, but doesn't meet the criteria (in my opinion) of the preventive medicine E/M codes," says JoAnne M. Wolf, RHIT, CPC, coding manager for Children's Physician Network in Minneapolis, Minn.Here's [...]