Wiki Cardiovascular explosion codes

[TFlaherty]

I work for a medical billing company who has recently taken on a
Cardiology group. Does anyone have any information about
the use of explosion codes in cardiology. This term is unfamilar
to me and I am trying to gain as much knowledge as possible.
Thank you

 

[jtuominen]

Hi there--

I don't know of that term being used to reference a clinical procedure but I work on the facility side and we use charge (service) codes to bill for our cardiac cath procedures that "explode" into the CPT codes used to bill for the procedure. For example, we have a single charge code that the staff pick to charge for a diagnostic cardiac cath procedure. When this selection is made it shows up as a single item in our clinical systems but when it crosses over into our billing system then expands or explodes as we call it into the 5 CPTs necessary for that procedure (93510, 93543, 93545, 93555, 93556). We set this up to reduce the amount of data entry time and to reduce errors. Your physician group could be making some reference to that charge methodology, and it could certainly also be used like it is on the facility side for profee charges as well, since both sides typically submit nearly identical CPTs.

Hope that helps. Good luck!