Wiki Billing MRA venous brain and MRA Brain w/o contrast

[Charles]

I need help.
I just got an insurance denial of a claim billed on separate encounters for the same patient. I billed one encounter for 70544 for and MRA of the Brain w/o contrast and a MRA of the venous brain 70544-51; the 70544-51 was denied as duplicate. My problem is both procedure have the same cpt code. So should I had billed it with a 59 modifier as an separate and identifiable cpt code? I'm not sure.

 

[mitchellde]

if it were indeed performed in two separate sessions then you need a 76 modifier. If were 2 different interpretations of the same scan you can only bill it one time. you will need to justify why this needed 2 separate encounters and 2 separate scans.