Left, Right, or Bilateral?
By G. John Verhovshek, MA, CPC In medicine—and equally so in medical coding—location matters. As such, physician coders must be adept when applying the three modifiers most commonly used to identify...
View ArticleAlign Coding with Video-assisted Thoracic Surgery Advances
2012 introduces new codes for both diagnostic and surgical VATS. By Laurette Pitman, RN, CPC-H, CGIC, CCS Due to advances in surgical procedures, video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) has an...
View ArticleChoose the Appropriate Surgical Modifier: 50, 51, or 59
By Nancy Clark, CPC, CPMA, CPC-I Modifiers are crucial to telling the story of a claim by identifying procedures that have been altered, without changing the core meaning of the code(s) submitted....
View ArticleBack to Basic: All the Ways (Not) to Unbundle
Coders learn early and are reminded often to avoid unbundling, or separately reporting procedures/services that are meant to be reported together, using a single code. As the introduction of the...
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