Wiki Base Units in anesthesia coding; Where to find???

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Mrsrpc

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The example in the CPB training text reads: "
A patient has two surgical procedures at one time:

01220Anesthesia for all closed procedures involving upper two-thirds of femur

01380Anesthesia for all closed procedures on knee joint

The closed procedure involving the upper two-thirds of the femur has 4 base units and the closed procedure on the knee joint has 3 base units. Only the code for the femur (01220) is reported because it is more complex and has a higher base value than the closed procedure on the knee."
However, I see no mention of "base units" anywhere in the text or the CPT book. How does one determine how many base units a procedure has? If it wasn't provided in the answer, I'd never know...
 

My take on it is that the base units do not have anything to do with code selection and that is why they are not in the code book. They are part of the billing process - not coding.

I found the above webpage with a google search (you will see a link for "Anesthesia Base Units" on there), but if you need information to bill a claim to an insurance carrier you can always call them for information.
 
Anesthesia base units are defined by CMS and can change from year to year. The CMS link posted above has the list of base units by code for 2022 and prior years.

In the real world, if you were working in anesthesia coding/billing, you'd likely refer to that document or else have it built into your encoding software. For example, EncoderPro has an Anesthesia fee calculator - I'm sure other encoders have similar functions.

Since you don't have access to those documents during the CPB exam, the base units are given to you in questions relating to anesthesia.
 
Mrsrpc said:
The example in the CPB training text reads: "
A patient has two surgical procedures at one time:

01220Anesthesia for all closed procedures involving upper two-thirds of femur

01380Anesthesia for all closed procedures on knee joint

The closed procedure involving the upper two-thirds of the femur has 4 base units and the closed procedure on the knee joint has 3 base units. Only the code for the femur (01220) is reported because it is more complex and has a higher base value than the closed procedure on the knee."
However, I see no mention of "base units" anywhere in the text or the CPT book. How does one determine how many base units a procedure has? If it wasn't provided in the answer, I'd never know...
Click to expand...
Hi there, the American Society of Anesthesiologists publishes base units in its annual Relative Value Guide booklet. CMS also publishes a list but it gave a handful of codes lower base units.
 
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