I understand you can't bill for it, because it is included with the visit, but I would have to imagine there is a cpt code for it. Even if you don't expect to recoup payment for the service you have to code the procedure and document it.
Q code is a medicare code, can you use that code even if it is a non medicare pt?? Txs for the help!!
Our office bills 88142-90 for non-medicare paps. We use automated thin layer preparation and send it to an outside lab (modifier 90). If you look in the CPT book above 88142 it states, "Codes 88141-88155...are used to report cervical or vaginal screening by various methods and to report physician interpretation services." See if any of these codes describe what your office does.
Those are the path codes though for the pathologist to use.
The coders desk reference for 88142 states:
"At the lab special instruments take the cells in the preservative suspension and "plate-out" a monolayer for screening-the careful review of the specimen for abnormal cells."
If you are obtaining the cells and plating them in a preservative suspension and sending it to the lab, then this is not the code for that activity. The Q code is for obtaining the specimen.