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Saturday, October 25, 2014

Cpt Codes Exist To Facilitate Medical Billing

By Patty Goff


There are so many complicated procedures in the medical field that it makes billing difficult. All the illnesses, procedures and medicines have complicated names. The individual who is qualified to work as a coder will have to be familiar with the Current Procedural Terminology or cpt codes to perform those duties.

There is a panel of experts who oversee maintenance of the medical code under the direction of the American Medical Association. It is called the CPT Editorial Panel. It is copyright protected by the AMA.

The coding system was devised to facilitate clarity in the communications sent from one medical expert to another department. There are separate ones to identify surgical procedures, diagnostic services and general medical procedures.

The ICD-10 coding system is used to specify what a patient is being treated for. The three types of CPT codes are used to differentiate among all the procedures, care services and surgeries. There are three separate categories, each having separate sections to cover various similar services. Some examples place in Category I are outpatient, Nursing Home and Home Health Care Nursing.

They become very specific. One is used for any administration of anesthesia. A separate set of numbers is used to refer to each body part that is operated on. Examples include head, back, extremities, which have separate numbers.

The individual code numbers for surgical procedures include integumentary system, reproductive system and auditory system. The now successful cochlear implant surgery would be classified under auditory system. As you can see, this makes billing run smoothly.

Codes for radiological procedures include radiation oncology, mammography and all diagnostic ultrasound procedures. This includes those used to examine the baby when a woman is pregnant. Sometimes the sex of the baby can be identified in this procedure.

Another category is pathology and laboratory. Drug testing, a simple urinalysis and various testing of the blood fall under this category. Transfusions are included. The postmortems, also known as autopsies, are classified here.

The ones for the category named medicine include routine vaccinations, administering those immunizations and treatments for kidney disease, which are transfusions to clean the blood. It is dialysis that maintains the patients life while they wait for a kidney transplant. After that, if successful, they will no longer require dialysis treatments.

Specialists also fall under the class of those used for medicine. Some specialties include otorhinolaryngology, psychiatry and cardiology. The cardiologist is known as the heart doctor and the otorhinolaryngologist is, in laymans terms, an ear, nose and throat doctor.

Numbers in Category II have four numbers followed by an alphabetical letter to identify them. This classification contains eleven codes. Included are routine physical exams, diagnostic screenings and taking the patients medical history.

Under Category III you will find the ones for psychotherapy and other counseling services. From time to time codes are retired. This year will not see a change in the psychological testing code. Each year they are re-evaluated.

The American Medical Association owns the registered trademark and the copyright belongs to them. They license it out to other medical organizations for their use. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, and the Federal Register make use of these codes to make their billing work function smoothly.




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