Dear Cari

Dear Cari, I am trying to code the following scenario. Can you provide me some assistance? A patient presents to the emergency room with SOB. A pulse oximetry reveals a low oxygen saturation. The emergency room physician’s report indicates SOB, hypoxemia, admit. The patient is admitted to inpatient status and [...]

Recently Certified Career Step Graduates

Congratulations to those that have recently reported passing a certification exam: 10/1/2012 – 12/31/2012 Ashleigh Sosebee -  12/27/2012 CCS Ashley Taylor -  10/3/2012 CCA Bethany Seidman -  12/1/2012 CPC Carrie Decker -  10/5/2012 CPC Christina Pierce -  11/30/2012 CCA Cristal Ewald -  12/8/2012 CPC Diana Hutchings -  11/17/2012 CPC Diane [...]

New Medical Coding and Billing Students Will Now Receive Free ICD-10 FastTrack Course

Career Step has announced that all new Medical Coding and Billing students will now also receive a free enrollment in the school’s ICD-10 FastTrack course, which will be released this summer. “Our primary goal is to ensure our students graduate with the skills required to begin working in their chosen [...]

Student Spotlight: Jill Smithers

Student Spotlight: Jill Smithers As I began to see a decline in my options as a secondary public school teacher, I kept thinking about becoming a medical coder. It seemed a great fit for me professionally, and I really believed that the job opportunities would be great because of the [...]

Graduate Spotlight – Diane Spoehr

Graduate Spotlight – Diane Spoehr It is a compliment to have been asked to write of my experience for the Career Step Coding Bulletin; as a new student I imagined how great I’d feel if I ever graduated, and now here I am!  When my husband, two sons, and I [...]

Psychotherapy CPT Codes

CPT codes for psychotherapy have been updated for the 2013 year! It has been 30 years since anybody has reevaluated the psychotherapy codes; many changes have been made in the practice and the specialty was ready for a change in the codes to more thoroughly describe the practice. Several new [...]

Modifier 50

Modifier 50 is used to report a bilateral procedure. This modifier is only to be appended to a CPT code when the same procedure is performed on both sides of the body during the same operative session.  Modifier 50 is not applicable with procedures that are bilateral in nature or [...]

Coding Long Term Insulin Use For Type 1 Diabetics

Question: I assigned code V58.67 on a record for a patient who is type 1 diabetic and using daily insulin injections. I was told this was incorrect. Don’t the coding guidelines say I need to report this code for diabetic patients who are using insulin? Answer: The use of code [...]

Selection of Principal Procedure

In the fourth quarter AHA Coding Clinic for ICD-9-CM the reporting of the principal procedure is clarified. Prior to this coding clinic the definition of the principal procedure was ambiguous and open to interpretation. The reason why this is important is because the assignment of the correct principal procedure can [...]

ICD-9-CM Diagnosis Coding: 948 Category of Codes

One of the keys to reporting codes from the 948 category is to remember that the 4th digit reports the percentage of burns of all degrees (1st, 2nd and 3rd) from burn all sites and the 5th digit reports only the percentage of burns of the 3rd degree from all [...]