Urology Coding Alert

Modifier 62 (Two surgeons): You should look to modifier 62 when your urologist participates in a surgery with another physician. For you to appropriately use this modifier, both surgeons should be working as primary surgeons and they must each have distinctly separate parts in the same CPT procedure, according to the modifier’s code description. Modifier 80 (Assistant surgeon): If your urologist only acts as a "second pair of hands" in the operating room, assisting the primary surgeon, you should append modifier 80 to the procedure code. An assistant surgeon does not have to provide his own operative notes, but the primary surgeon should note the second physician’s name as the assistant surgeon in his operative report.