PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Joshua A Hirsch
AU  - William D Donovan
AU  - Thabele M Leslie-Mazwi
AU  - Greg N Nicola
AU  - Laxmaiah Manchikanti
AU  - Ezequiel Silva III
TI  - Component coding and the neurointerventionalist: a tale with an end
AID  - 10.1136/neurintsurg-2012-010606
DP  - 2013 Nov 01
TA  - Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery
PG  - 615--619
VI  - 5
IP  - 6
4099  - http://jnis.bmj.com/content/5/6/615.short
4100  - http://jnis.bmj.com/content/5/6/615.full
SO  - J NeuroIntervent Surg2013 Nov 01; 5
AB  - Component coding is the method NeuroInterventionalists have used for the past 20 years to bill procedural care. The term refers to separate billing for each discrete aspect of a surgical or interventional procedure, and has typically allowed billing the procedural activity, such as catheterization of vessels, separately from the diagnostic evaluation of radiographic images. This work is captured by supervision and interpretation codes. Benefits of component coding will be reviewed in this article. The American Medical Association/Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee has been filtering for codes that are frequently reported together. NeuroInterventional procedures are going to be caught in this filter as our codes are often reported simultaneously as for example routinely occurs when procedural codes are coupled to those for supervision and interpretation. Unfortunately, history has shown that when bundled codes have been reviewed at the RUC, there has been a trend to lower overall RVU value for the combined service compared with the sum of the values of the separate services.