Radiology Question for the Week of August 20, 2018

Question:

There is no CPT^® code for MRA (magnetic resonance angiography) bilateral extremity run-off, and a colleague says that we should only bill a MRA of the abdomen and MRA of both extremities. A separate code for the pelvis should not be assigned for MRA pelvis because this overlaps the abdomen and extremities. Is this correct?

Answer:

If only a lower extremity MRA is performed, CPT code 73725 would be reported. You would report it twice if both extremity exams were medically necessary, and only once if one extremity was imaged for comparison.

Hospitals billing under the outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS) should bill C8912, C8913, C8914 for OPPS. If the aorta and lower extremities were imaged, then the MRA abdomen and MRA extremity code should be reported. This was discussed in the Spring 2006 issue Clinical Examples in Radiology, published by the American Medical Association and the American College of Radiology.

CPT^® is a registered trademark of the American Medical Association.