Question:
Can we report 78445 in addition to any other nuclear medicine procedure?
Answer:
Do not report 78445 in addition to any other nuclear medicine procedure. As the SNMMI coding committee states, “CPT® 78445 is a singlebody-area flow imaging study and a stand-alone procedure code and is not intended to be used as an add-on code with other nuclear medicine procedures. The commonly performed flows with nuclear medicine procedures have their own specific CPT codes such as the conventional threephase bone scan, CPT 78315 Bone and/or joint imaging; three phase and typically consists of flow, blood-pool and delayed imaging phases or CPT 78216 Liver-Spleen Imaging with vascular flow.” A flow study would be inherent in this procedure code.
This question was answered in our Nuclear Medicine & PET Coder. For more hot topics relating to radiology services, please visit our store or call us at 1.800.252.1578, ext. 2.