Wiki Laminectomy question?

[Amzie]

I have just a general question I guess: My doctor states he did a L4-5 bilateral laminectomy, facetectomy and foraminotomy for spinal stenosis decompression. I am kind of in a debate here with another coder and I think that it should be coded as:
63047 only since the physician is only decompressing the nerve root at that level.

My co worker states that it should be billed as: 63047 and 63048 since the cpt book states per segement.

Can anyone help me out here? I would really appreciate it very much and if there is any documentation out there I would greatly appreciate that as well!

Thank you in advance!

 

[svms]

I was taught that a segment is L4-5 (63047), next segment would be L5-S1 (63048) and so forth.

I am sorta new to Orthopedics coding, but something that I found valuable to me is AAPC's "Spine Surgery Coding: Don't Break Your Neck Trying To Figure It Out." as well as "Spine Surgery Coding: Are You Breaking Your Back Trying to Figure It Out" presented to AAPC by Kim Pollock from karenzupko.com.

I don't have the link but I'm sure you can find them if you search or google.

 

[nrichard]

Spinal Coding

I've been doing Spines for three years. I agree 63047 for L4 and 63048, for L5. This code is defined in CPT by vertebral segment, not interspace.