CPT codes 86359, 86360, and86361 are not meant to be billed together..you must bill for only one of these, whichever is most appropriate. 86359 is for total T cell counts (read CD3), 86360 is for CD4 AND CD8 absolute count WITH ratio, and 86361 is for absolute CD4 counts alone. Flow cytometry or other methodology may be used for these. Other cell surface markers assays must use 88180, unless you are doing HLA-B27. If you are doing a more complete immunophenotyping workup, such as CD3/CD4/CD8/CD19/CD56/CD16/CD45 along with a separate differential and white count, you can probably bill 881880 times the number of markers run plus bill for the CBC and diff separately. If you are doing a single platform method, this becomes arguable. Of course all of this pertains primarily to outpatient billing...inpatients are a whole other can of worms.....
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Mar 10 2001 - 19:31:31 EST