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'Ridiculous': Doctor charges for surgery after pulling splinter from toddler's hand (www.rawstory.com)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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When George Lai of Portland, Oregon, took his toddler son to a pediatrician last summer for a checkup, the doctor noticed a little splinter in the child’s palm. “He must have gotten it between the front door and the car,” Lai later recalled, and the child wasn’t complaining. The doctor grabbed a pair of forceps — aka tweezers — and pulled out the splinter in “a second,” Lai said. That brief tug was transformed into a surgical billing code: Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code 10120, “incision and removal of a foreign body, subcutaneous” — at a cost of $414.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This is a good point. The Doc could have just put a one sentence in the kids chart without a second thought and that triggered a billing admin to code it for maximum stupidity.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Or simply chose the relevant code that the insurance companies usually won't deny.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

They may not have even known the code computer charting can be challenging for some people and training is sparse.