Coding Pain Procedures With Precision
Expert advice for getting paid for epidural injections.
J
ust as with
epidural
steroid injec-
tions, one false move
when you're coding
these pain proce-
dures can spell big
trouble. But as you'll
see, there are many
cracks for reim-
bursement to fall
through when you're
coding and billing
many commonly per-
formed pain proce-
dures.
If an insurer will
only pay for a patient
to have an injection once every 90 days and you treat him at 60 days,
your claim will be denied. If your doctor uses a different code in his
claim than your coder, your claim will be denied. If you don't list a
covered diagnosis as your first diagnosis on your claim form,
Medicare won't pay you. This list goes on. Here's a review of pain
management injections for chronic pain that are particularly confus-
ing to code.
Epidural steroid injections
The regular epidural steroid injection (ESI) procedures (CPT Codes
3 4 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6
Coding & Billing
Stephanie Ellis, RN, CPC
• CONFUSING Some pain management procedures are billable with other procedures and some are not.
