Pulmonology Coding Alert

Question: A pulmonologist in our practice provided a patient with an at-home spirometer to capture “patient-initiated spirometric recordings” over 30 days. What code do I assign for this service?

Georgia Subscriber

Answer: You’ll assign one of three patient-initiated spirometric recording services, depending which components are covered:

• 94014 (Patient-initiated spirometric recording per 30-day period of time; includes reinforced education, transmission of spirometric tracing, data capture, analysis of transmitted data, periodic recalibration and review and interpretation by a physician or other qualified health care professional)
• 94015 (… recording (includes hook-up, reinforced education, data transmission, data capture, trend analysis, and periodic recalibration))
• 94016 (… review and interpretation only by a physician or other qualified health care professional)

Code 94014 includes both the technical and professional components (better known as the global service), 94015 represents only the technical component, and 94016 covers the professional component only. Since each code represents either the technical component, the professional component, or both components, you do not need to append modifiers 26 (Professional component) or TC (Technical component …).

The codes should be reported only once in the 30 days to avoid accidentally billing the service twice within the service’s scheduled interval, since the codes are based on a 30-day time period. Additionally, each code features the phrase “patient-initiated spirometric recording” in its descriptor to indicate that the patient must perform the spirometry recording at a predetermined time every day over the course of 30 days.