Saphenous vein grafting for bypass grafting

[ljones315]

I am new at this kind of coding so I need some help. The group that I am coding for they have another physician in the group perform the harvesting and this is all they do. How do I code for this. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[dpumford]

Open Vein Harvest is included in the surgical package unless it was done by endoscopy, surgical, including video-assisted harvest of vein, It needs to state in the report if it was removed endoscopically in order to code for it (+33508)

Note, 33508 is a add on code so has to be billed with CABG procedure, does this physician assit the surgeon?

Hope this helps!

 

[ljones315]

This is the problem I am running into. Most of the time it is open and the only thing the other surgeon is doing is the harvesting. He does a seperate report dictating only the harvesting. The primary surgeon does the actual surgery on his own.

Thanks for any help.

 

[lisigirl]

As far as the payer is concerned, the two surgeons are one in the same. As Deb stated, the endoscopic vein harvest is an add-on code so it must be billed with the cabg codes therefore, you will need to bill this under the primary surgeon. If done open, you can't bill for it at all.

If the surgeon performing the vein harvest is concerned about being credited RVUs for the work he does, maybe there is something your practice can do on its end to flag the cases he particpates in but there is no way to submit this to insurance on its own.

Lisi, CPC
eharkler@nmh.org