Wiki Gangrenous diabetic toe removal

[TARAGRANT]

I'm coding for the podiatrist in our wound care office. We are an outpatient department of the hospital. He had a patient to come in that basically had a dead toe hanging on by a thread! He removed it with a few snips and that was it. I don't feel I should use the CPT code for an amputation, but how else would you code it? The patient is a non-insulin dependent diabetic. Here's the part in his dictation where he is talking about the removal of the dead toe.
"...........Her 2nd toe is completely dead and hanging off. It is full of necrotic tissue and purulence down within the foot. We talked about the fact that her toe was dead. Informed consent was signed. We pretty easily snipped off the couple fibers of tissue holding on the toe..........."
Any suggestions are welcome!

 

[Orthocoderpgu]

Use -52 modifier for this

The toe may have been easily removed, but your doc would have had to close the wound. In this situation that may not have been easy due to all the tissue necrosis. I would use the amputation code with a -52 modifier.