Ask Dr. Z

If a cardiologist who is interpreting pre-TAVR/TMVR/TTVR/Watchman MRI/MRA/CT testing does an extensive amount of surgical planning in addition to the radiology interpretation, is there a way to bill for this extra time other than using modifier -22? The interpreter is not seeing the patient in follow-up nor is she going to be performing the surgery, but she is providing her professional imaging expertise to the surgeons. At times she spends up to over an hour past the additional time it normally takes to do an interpretation of these tests to assist with the surgical planning. We looked into 99358-99359, but I'm unsure if this is appropriate to bill with these codes if the provider is not performing an E/M service, as the primary codes they are billing are for the imaging interpretation. We know that since they are billing for the interpretation they cannot use interprofessional consult codes nor the radiology consult code.