Primary Care Coding Alert

This guide streamlines payers diagnoses order variations. When your FP provides a preoperative consultation, rope in pay by listing your carriers or insurers preferred primary ICD-9 code; get the order right each time by following one of three options. Case study: An established 10-year-old patient suffering from asthma with extrinsic status asthmaticus is set to have tubes implanted to treat his chronic serous otitis media. The FP performs a consultation for the surgeon. On the claim, youll append 493.01 (Extrinsic asthma with status asthmaticus), V72.82 (Pre-operative respiratory examination), and 381.10 (Chronic serous otitis media, simple or unspecified) to the consult code to represent the patients condition. Problem: How should you order the ICD-9 codes? It depends, experts say. The order of diagnoses is important in pre-op consults, says Tina Landskroener, CPC, CCS-P, PCS, business office manager for Blessing Physician Services in Quincy, Ill. Due to differences in payer policy, however, [...]