How to Understand Cardiovascular Coding

Medical billing and coding requires an entire body of knowledge separate from delivering medical treatment. That's why so many physicians, nurses and other medical practitioners hire or rely on medical billers and coders to translate their work into codes and terminology that insurance companies and Medicare will accept and reimburse. However, because medical billers and coders aren't medical practitioners, they usually face a learning curve coming to understand the American Medical Association Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes required for billing. That means billing professionals working with cardiovascular treatment billing may have to work with their practitioners to understand CPT codes.

Instructions

• 1

  Study your CPT code manual and pay particular attention to the cardiovascular codes from in the 93000 and 94000 range. Cardiopulmonary procedures are also listed in the 92000 range such as "92995 - percutaneous transluminal coronary atherectomy by mechanical or other method, with or without balloon angioplasty; single vessel."

• 2

  Talk with a cardiologist or cardiology nurse in your medical facility, practice or your client's office to understand the most common procedures they perform and make a list. Ask for other ways someone might describe those procedures and note those too.

• 3

  Review your list against your CPT code book and highlight the cardiology codes that will be most common for you to use.

• 4

  Read up on the major cardiovascular procedures on your list if you want a deeper understanding. Becoming more familiar with procedures will help you better understand related infrequent interventions and procedures as they come to you in charts and billing sheets.