Wiki Preventative E/M and Smoking Cessation

dballard2004

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If a patient presents to the office for his/her annual preventative medicine visit and smoking cessation is performed as part of the preventative visit, would you code for both separately? Would you add modifier 25 to the smoking cessation code?

I am thinking that the smoking cessation would be included in the preventative medicine E/M service (99381-99397) because the guidelines state that the preventative medicine E/M codes include any counseling, risk factor reduction interventions and/or anticipatory guidance that are performed at the time of the preventative visit. I am getting some pushback from one of my sites about this.

How do others handle this?
 
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