Documenting and coding preventive visits: a physicians's perspective.

In our experience, family physicians vary widely in their understanding of preventive care coding. Questions we’ve heard range from “What ICD-9 codes are appropriate with preventive care visits?” all the way down to “Preventive codes? What are preventive codes? I only use evaluation and management [E/M] codes.” No matter what your level of comfort (or discomfort) with coding preventive visits, we hope to offer information you’ll find useful. We will define the documentation components necessary to code preventive visits for patients 18 to 64 years old, review the appropriate ICD-9 and CPT codes and how to properly pair them, and discuss the proper use of modifier 25. We won’t cover the Medicare guidelines for preventive visits or how to code pediatric preventive visits. Coding resources for these visits are listed on page 16.