meaganbritainy
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Hello,
I Code for Dermatology and Dermatology Pathology. Our organization has decided that Derm path after a Mohs surgery is 88305 if a debulk and 88321 if looking for perineural invasion and did not explain the reasoning for either. so Now after making changes based off of this the Pathologist is asking why. I cannot find anything to support what our organization has decided and in looking into can't find anything that would state that MOH's surgery changes how you would treat coding pathology at all. Everything I can find shows you code it like any other sample coming in and it's MOH's that has to be careful and may need to change from MOH's to Excision depending.
Most of the time our MOH's provider if sending something to our pathologist is sending debulk, often this is to check for perineural invasion, to me this would be a surgical pathology. They might send samples that they prepared but didn't look at, (but I don't have any recollection of this happening, and I have been coding the area for almost 7 years) this to me would then be a consult. any thoughts. Am I wrong in this line of thinking.
I know this became an issue, because 88305 and 17311 hit against one another and were getting denied, hence the decision from the organization on how to handle it.
Anyone have any insite, articles, anything I can point to or go to that could explain their decision or support this policy being changed.
I Code for Dermatology and Dermatology Pathology. Our organization has decided that Derm path after a Mohs surgery is 88305 if a debulk and 88321 if looking for perineural invasion and did not explain the reasoning for either. so Now after making changes based off of this the Pathologist is asking why. I cannot find anything to support what our organization has decided and in looking into can't find anything that would state that MOH's surgery changes how you would treat coding pathology at all. Everything I can find shows you code it like any other sample coming in and it's MOH's that has to be careful and may need to change from MOH's to Excision depending.
Most of the time our MOH's provider if sending something to our pathologist is sending debulk, often this is to check for perineural invasion, to me this would be a surgical pathology. They might send samples that they prepared but didn't look at, (but I don't have any recollection of this happening, and I have been coding the area for almost 7 years) this to me would then be a consult. any thoughts. Am I wrong in this line of thinking.
I know this became an issue, because 88305 and 17311 hit against one another and were getting denied, hence the decision from the organization on how to handle it.
Anyone have any insite, articles, anything I can point to or go to that could explain their decision or support this policy being changed.