aarnold13
Networker
I work at a family practice office and I have one physician that does a lot of lesion removals. I just spoke with a coder at a local dematology office but want a little more clarification.
Here is an example of one of his dictations for a recent lesion removal:
"....A shave biopsy was taken and then extensivelly cauterized then curetted fairly aggresively. There is a central split extending deeper in the center of that. I was able to curette down to an apparently cancer-free base with no more friable tissue identified. We will send this to pathology. The lesion size was 2cm X 1cm."
Ok, so here is my question. The pathology result came back with diagnosis of Actinic Keratosis. Would I code this as 11302 for shave or do I charge 17000 for destruction of benign lesion? If this were to have come back as being a carcinoma would I have charged as a shave or as a destruction of malignant lesion?
Thanks for your help!!
Here is an example of one of his dictations for a recent lesion removal:
"....A shave biopsy was taken and then extensivelly cauterized then curetted fairly aggresively. There is a central split extending deeper in the center of that. I was able to curette down to an apparently cancer-free base with no more friable tissue identified. We will send this to pathology. The lesion size was 2cm X 1cm."
Ok, so here is my question. The pathology result came back with diagnosis of Actinic Keratosis. Would I code this as 11302 for shave or do I charge 17000 for destruction of benign lesion? If this were to have come back as being a carcinoma would I have charged as a shave or as a destruction of malignant lesion?
Thanks for your help!!
