|
The following supplement to Ophthalmology Coding Alert is the slides and transcript of a teleconference presented by The Coding Institute. The speaker Regan Bode CPC OCS is a Certified Procedural Coder (CPC) and an Ophthalmic Coding Specialists (OCS) working for an ophthalmic practice in Bellingham Washington. She has been involved in coding for the past six years and was the first coder to pass the newly created Ophthalmic Coding Specialist exam through the AAO and JCAPHO in March 2004. Regan works closely with the physicians in her group to assure proper coding and compliance and is assisting her front office staff as they work towards passing the OCS exam. She also serves as President of her local coding group. Thank you everyone for calling in today just a suggestion if questions pop-up during today's teleconference please jot them down so you will remember when we get time at the end to answer some questions and Mandy will give you the instructions for dialing in to answer those. We will go ahead and get started. Complications can arise from any number of sources within your ophthalmic practice. Some common problems involve our glaucoma patients and the tests and procedures you use to treat these patients. We will cover some of these common issues - and how to avoid them - in today's session. Glaucoma along with cataract diabetic retinopathy and macular degermation is one of the four leading causes of blindness in adult Americans. The management of glaucoma includes the early detection and treatment to be able to arrest the loss of vision. Almost 50% of the patients with glaucoma remain undetected. 30% of glaucoma patients are those with normal intraocular pressure. Furthermore there are patients with elevated intraocular pressure that do not necessarily have glaucoma. Dependence upon visual field to separate those patients with glaucoma from those without the disease would still miss a large number of patients. This is because ganglion cells which enter each optic nerve must be lost before there is a glaucomatous visual field defect created. Using fundus photograph to detect loss of optic nerve rim tissue may not detect disease until two or more years after visual field loss has occurred. Additionally some patients cannot perform visual field tests reliably as it is a subjective test requiring a certain level of alertness and cooperation. Scanning laser glaucoma tests allow earlier detection of glaucoma. It will distinguish patients with glaucomatous damage irrespective of the status of intraocular pressure. It may do this before visual fields and/or disc photos could. This would allow early and efficient efforts for treatment toward the disease process. We will go into a little……. For more read:-
http://www.supercoder.com/articles/articles-alerts/opc/clear-up-glaucoma-coding-and-billing-confusion/
Related Articles -
ophthalmology codes, glaucoma coding and billing, glaucoma coding, glaucoma billing, medical coding, medical billing, icd-9 codes, cpt codes, hcpcs co,
| 
