2009 CPT Codes Pediatric Coding

							The 2009 CPT codes have eased a lot of issues for pediatric coders. When
CPT 2008 introduced initial intensive hospital care, the only place to
stick the code was in the other evaluation and management services
section. This placement led to confusion regarding how to properly use
99477 (Initial hospital care, per day, for the evaluation and management
of the neonate, 28 days of age or less, who requires intensive
observation, frequent interventions, and other intensive care services).
The new 2009 CPT codes have been renumbered and relocated in the
intensive care subsection. You can now easily see that a newborn
progresses from intensive care to subsequent critical care.
To make sure you don't get lost in the renumbered and relocated sections
follow these fundamentals:
1. Newborn Care Codes
The 2009 CPT codes numbers the whole newborn care section including
normal newborn care. Now, you will report 99431-99440 with new codes
99460-99465.
2. Transport Codes
Pay attention if you code for a hospital that sends pediatric patients to
a facility with a higher-level nursery -- or for a practice that has to
coordinate an emergency transport. You'll find the pediatric critical
care patient transport codes after 99465 in CPT 2009.


3. Critical Care Pediatric Codes for older child (2 - 5 year)
If the jump from daily pediatric critical care to hourly adult critical
care after 24 months of age seemed extreme, refer to the two new
pediatric critical care per day codes for children age 2 through 5. These
codes will follow the inpatient pediatric and neonatal codes, which CPT
2009 moves to 99468-99472 from 99293-99296.

The 2009 CPT codes for pediatrics will ensure the success of the daily
bundled neonatal and current pediatric critical and intensive care. The
new changes will not only increase your ease at coding, it'll also
increase your opportunity for increased payment.
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