| Specialty
Groups — Oncology
Medical Oncology Code Changes
Stereotactic radiosurgery treatment planning and delivery is constantly
changing as new equipment and techniques are employed in cancer therapy.
To accommodate technological changes in treatment planning and delivery,
new HCPCS Level II codes have been implemented for 2004:
G0338
Linear accelerator-based stereotactic radiosurgery plan, including
dose volume histograms for target and other critical structure tolerances,
plan optimization performed for highly conformal distributions, plan
positional accuracy and dose verification, all lesions treated, per course
of treatment
- This code was created by CMS to distinguish a stereotactic
plan created for linear accelerator treatment from a plan used for
GammaKnife (G0242) therapy.
G0339
Image-guided robotic linear accelerator-based stereotactic radiosurgery,
complete course of therapy in one session, or first session of
fractionated treatment
G0340
Image-guided robotic linear accelerator-based stereotactic
radiosurgery, delivery including collimator changes and custom plugging,
fractionated treatment, all lesions, per session, second through fifth
sessions, maximum five sessions per course of treatment
-
According to the Federal Register, November 7, 2003:
To further clarify, when providers perform multi-session
image-guided robotic SRS therapy, they should bill using HCPCS code
G0339 for the first session. For each additional session subsequent to
the first session, providers should bill using only HCPCS code G0340
up to a maximum of five sessions.
-
If the planned course of therapy will encompass more than
five treatment sessions, the CPTβ
procedure codes for treatment delivery should be assigned for all
treatments delivered (77401-77416).
Cindy
C. Parman, CPC, CPC-H
principal and co-founder of Coding Strategies, Inc. in Atlanta, GA. Cindy
is a current member of the Advisory Board for the American Academy of
Professional Coders (AAPC) and a faculty instructor for AMA Solutions, a
subsidiary of the American Medical Association. She serves as the Consulting
Editor of the Radiology Coding Alert
and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of General Surgery Coding Alert and Pain Management Coding Alert.
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