Coding the Type of Service Rendered Many Doctors of Chiropractic enjoy providing wellness and preventative maintenance care, in addition to active and pain relief care. Sometimes, it is the exclusive care of an office. Some third-party payors have rules about reporting these types of care to them and/or the patients. In this quick tutorial we …
Clarification & Expectations The procedure code 98943 represents extraspinal manipulation for Chiropractors. What areas are included in this code? Can one bill 98943 with other CMT spinal codes when billing payors? There is no hard and fast rule for the second question, but there are specific rules to make sure you are performing and documenting…
Medically Necessary vs. Clinically Appropriate Because the spine functions as a unit in how it adapts – either positively or negatively – adjusting the full spine makes sense. Full spine adjusters know that addressing just the primary area of a patient’s complaint can be futile and may even extend the length of time it takes…
Identifying Clinically Appropriate Subluxations For Medicare and many other third-party payers, doctors can only justify examining and treating areas of the body in which the patient presents with complaints. For this reason, it is extremely important to get as much information as possible from patients about their chief complaints as well as their past medical…
Primary vs. Compensatory Many Chiropractors practice full spine adjusting, or at minimum full spine evaluation. Others practice area specific adjusting according to complaint. Whichever way a doctor practices, they have reasoning for it, and it must be communicated in the documentation. A chosen chiropractic technique may require resolving/addressing areas of the body other than the…
CMT & E/M Coding Expectations There are many occasions when it may be necessary to perform both an Evaluation and Management (E/M) service (9920X or 9921X) and a Chiropractic Manipulative Treatment (CMT) service on the same date. Such examples include: New patient visits Established patients with new conditions, new injuries, aggravations, or exacerbations Periodic re-evaluations…