Wiki Benign vs malignant

[lalalisa]

Patient came to Plastic surgeon after dermatologist did a punch biopsy for a lesion that came back suspiscious for squamous cell ca. Plastic surgeon toook pt to O.R and removed the lesion and did a skin graft. The doc coded it as 11604,15100 with 173.42 fro dx.

The path came back and showed it to be seborrheic keratosis with no evidence of malignancy. So I was changing the codes to 11404,15100 with 702.19.

Seems like a silly question, but isnt my way the correct way to code it?

thank you!

 

[pezztx]

IMO, you can't bill for suspicion of. They didn't know what the dx was at the time it was biopsied or removed. A simple 238.X may be able to be used for neoplasm of uncertain behavior.

 

[mitchellde]

238.2 requires a path report also. The original poster is correct with the code they chose. You cannot code suspicious diagnosis and you cannot use uncertain behavior without a path report that states it is of uncertain behavior, or some use the term atypia or atypical.