Urology Coding Alert

Watch for additional procedures, such as biopsies, that you can also code. No two surgeries are exactly alike, especially when you're referring to nephrectomies -- therefore, you won't always code the surgery exactly the same way. But if you can learn the basics, based on three common scenarios, you'll be able to accurately code any nephrectomy operative session with ease. Report Both Partial and Radical When Warranted Scenario 1: When faced with a small renal (kidney) cell carcinoma (cancer), a urologist often performs a partial nephrectomy, removing only the tumor and a small portion of surrounding normal kidney tissue. The pathology report of the frozen section, however, may occasionally reveal incomplete tumor removal, and the surgeon will then correctly perform a radical nephrectomy (complete removal of the kidney) as definitive therapy. You can report both the partial nephrectomy and the radical nephrectomy under these clinical circumstances. You would report 50240 (Nephrectomy, [...]