Decoding the Codes: A Comprehensive Guide to Interventional Pulmonology Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) Coding...

Interventional pulmonology is a young and growing field; this necessitates an understanding of billing, coding, and documentation rules. Interventional pulmonologists may not appreciate these intricacies. Advocating for resources to benefit patients with administrators, insurance companies, and others requires understanding these principles. This series of 4 articles will review the fundamental and advanced aspects of billing, coding, documentation, and programmatic building of an interventional pulmonology program. Part 1 will review the fundamentals of billing, coding, and reimbursement. Part 2 will review bronchoscopy/endoscopy codes and procedural modifiers. Part 3 will review pleural codes and unlisted codes. Part 4 will combine the previous parts and describe approaches to build, expand, and capture the work involved in a robust interventional pulmonary program. Each part will compliment and support the others with the end goal being to create a broad framework for any IP program to use as a foundation to balance patient care, revenue capture, growth, and a clinical work-life balance. This first part of the series will review some of the foundational principles of billing and coding, which will be built on in the subsequent parts of the series. This includes: health care common procedure coding system, current procedural terminology, ambulatory payment categories, and relative value units, among others. This includes how new codes are created, valued, compensated, and how this effects interventional pulmonologists. Without a thorough understanding of optimal medical billing and coding, interventional pulmonologists are often at a disadvantage. This 4-part series seeks to address and rectify this issue.