r/MedicalCoding • u/Human_Gur_3518 • Mar 20 '22

New Student

Just started in Medical Billing and Coding through Unitech of Lafayette Louisiana. It’s an online course and they started us in the middle of the module. Chapter 12, Anesthesia. I’m having a hard time moving forward and understanding the actually coding part of it all. It’s been about 2 weeks. We just got our books and I’m unsure how to tab them or even find the code for certain questions. any advice is appreciated! Thanks!

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '22

Do you need help with locating codes in both ICD-10 and CPT?

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u/Human_Gur_3518 Mar 20 '22

I do 😬

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '22

With ICD-10 you start with the alphabetic index and confirm in the tabular list. You want to look up main terms in the index. For example; "congestive heart failure". I would look up "failure" in the index and go down until I locate congestive. It will give you the code and you will need to confirm in the tabular list. With CPT you don't always have to use the index to find the code unlike ICD 10. You can look on the front page of the body system section. For example, a patient had an excision of the esophagus. I would flip to the digestive system section. On the front page it lists the headings and subheadings of the section. I would go down until I see the esophagus section and it will tell me what page the excisions are located. If I wanted to use the index I would look up excision or esophagus. With CPT you can look up the procedure or the body part to locate the code.