Effective Jan. 1, 2011, new CPT codes and, inevitably, new Correct Coding Initiative (CCI) physician edits are there for physicians. For version 17.0, “19,822 new edit pairs have been added to the database while 9,778 have been terminated, for a net gain of 10,044 new edit pairs,” according to Frank Cohen, MPA, MBB, of the Frank Cohen Group, in his Dec. 14, 2010, “NCCI Version 17.0 Change Analysis” announcement.

The main edits you want to be sure to watch for are those related to new code 96446 (Chemotherapy administration to the peritoneal cavity via indwelling port or catheter).

The 96446 non-mutually exclusive (NME) edits are largely what you would expect based on other chemotherapy code edits — bundles with E/M, anesthesia, venipuncture and other vascular procedures, for example. You want to be sure to watch which is the column 1 code and which is the column 2 code for these bundles.

CCI places E/M codes 99217-99239 in the column 1 position and 96446 in the column 2 position. On the other hand, CCI places 96446 in the column 1 position and E/M codes 99201-99215 in the column 2 position, as shown below:

Remember that if you report both codes in an NME edit pair without a modifier, Medicare (and payers who adopt these edits) will deny the column 2 code and pay you only for the column 1 code. The edits in the table above all have a modifier indicator of 1, meaning that you may override the edits with a modifier when appropriate, such as in the case of distinct,…