August 13, 2015

Question:

Do you advise that we hold our claims for excision of skin lesion procedures until after the pathology report is received? That seems to delay our charges and I want to get them billed quickly!

Answer:

Yes, you need to hold the claim for the excision of skin lesion codes (114xx for benign skin lesions, 116xx for malignant skin lesions) if you do not have a previous pathology report showing a malignancy. Why? Because the CPT codes for the procedures require the lesion pathology be identified. If you have a biopsy report for the lesion showing a malignancy, then you can go ahead and bill the excision procedure using the malignant CPT (116xx) and diagnosis codes.