All You Should Know About Foreign Body Removal

Anyone who has been involved with coding already knows just how frustrating it can be to deal with some of the tougher cases in involving FBR, or foreign body removal. As with many of the things that you will code, this is the same in terms of the fact that each case can vary from patient to patient. For example, one patient will have a different type of removal than another and the method will also be quite different in nature.

Even if they have a removal that is necessary from the same area, physicians are well known for using different methods from one another from time to time. This is why you will want to keep on top of all of the coding in this area so you will have a much easier time in each individual case.

If you happen to have a certain case where a cornea is being worked on for a foreign body removal by a physician, you are going to want to make sure that the equipment for visualization is taken into consideration.

You can go ahead and choose the code that will include both the area of the body that will be worked on as well as the type of equipment used during the procedure itself. For example, if you have a slit lamp in use, you can report code 65222, which is foreign body removal of the cornea with slit lamp. When the lamp is not used, you can use code 65220.

View all Articles by: Kathryn Etienne, CCS-P