Changes Coming to Follow Up Care in September 2006

If your practice routinely provides burn or laceration follow up care, head’s up because after September of this year, there will be three new post-op codes added that will better detail the services rendered during the patient’s visit and should improve your reimbursement rate.

Be sure and alert your staff that V58.3 will no longer be a valid code to use and the new three designations should be chosen from when coding the patient’s visit. The three new designations are as follows:

* nonsurgical wound dressing change or removal, V58.30
* surgical wound dressing change or removal, V58.31
* suture removal, V58.32.

Having more exact coding designations to go with the ICD-9 codes should help more practices get full reimbursements on their medical billing claims. The code range that normally applies for these types of procedures is 99211-99212 (Office or other outpatient visit for the evaluation and management of an established patient …).

Also, if the same physician did not perform the original lacertation repair as suture removal, use the E/M code and link it to V58.32. Additionally, be sure your office doesn’t bill the suture removal with an E/M code when the same physician removes the sutures as placed them. The post-operative care would be included under the standard 10-day global period.

View all Articles by: Melissa Clark, CCS-P