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Billing for debridement

Date: Jul 23, 2019

Question:

When a doctor takes out an infected pacemaker or ICD and talks about how much tissue was debrided, I bill code 11042 with an -XU modifier along with the 33235, 33233 for pacemaker or 33244,33241 for ICD. However I was recently told that per NCCI the debridement is included in the surgery. Is it included only if the debridement is done for surgical approach? Is it better to use modifier -22?

Question ID : 12811
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