Medical billing code books are a necessary part of medical insurance billing. You will find that you frequently search for codes and need up-to-date codebooks to do so.

Medical billing codes change every year and when they are out of date insurance companies will no longer accept them and your claims will be denied because of the codes.

What billing code books are available and required? CPT4, ICD9, HCPCS and RBRVS are available.

CPT Code Books – or Current Procedural Terminology. Services and procedures performed by physicians are described through the use of CPT codes. CPT code books are lists of all procedure codes with an explanation of each code. They are listed both by number and alphabetically.

These codes are updated annually and it is important to be aware of the changes each year. Sometimes the changes are minimal, but sometimes there are a lot of changes and that affects the provider a lot.

The CPT codebooks also contain a list of modifiers. Modifiers indicate that a service has somehow altered the indicated CPT descriptor without changing the definition. American Medical Association (AMA) CPT modifiers are two-digit numerical codes that appear after a procedure code.

ICD Code Books or International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification. The ICD9 coding system is an international classification system that groups related disease entities and procedures for the purpose of reporting statistical information. It is a system of descriptions and codes used to record the occurrence of medical diagnoses.

ICD9 billing code books list diagnoses alphabetically and numerically. These codes are also updated annually. Once again, updates are very important. If you use outdated ICD9 codes, your claims will most likely be denied.

HCPCS Code Books – or Health Care Common Procedures Coding System. HCPCS is a standardized coding system used primarily to identify products, supplies, and services not included in CPT codes, such as ambulance services and durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics, and supplies (DMEPOS) when used outside of a doctor’s office. medical.

As with the other billing code books, the HCPCS are also updated annually. Unless you are a provider, or a billing service billing for a provider, who provides patients with services or supplies not covered in the CPT4 codebook, you will not use these codes.

You can also buy specialized code books. We have seen them for anesthesia coding,
Chiropractic coding, physical therapy and allergy coding. If you are a specialty office, or if you are a billing service that bills only a small group of specialty providers, you may want to investigate them. They are usually less expensive and contain data only related to that specialty.