When deciding what procedures to include, consider the following criteria:
Does the procedure have a non-contract charge associated with it?
Do you want to track how many times the procedure is performed in the office on a monthly and year-to-date basis?
Do you want to see the procedure description on the printed schedule?
Does the procedure move a patient from one status code to another?
Do you want to post a word processing letter automatically when posting a certain procedure?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then the procedure should be included. If the answers to the questions are no, then there is a better place to track the procedure. Keep in mind that status codes also work in tracking statistics. It is not necessary to add a procedure code if a status code is already tracking the information you need.
Create a procedure code for anything you want to track statistically; you do not need procedure codes for everything that your practice does, unless you want to track it. For example, you do not need a procedure code such as 018 NT Upper Archwire unless you want to keep track of how many upper 018 NT archwires are posted. Instead, use the code Change Upper AW. Procedure codes are not designed to track inventory; if you use them as such, you can slow down the checkout process.
The standard procedure code list has 10 Exam procedure codes. Two of these codes, Exam/Child and Exam/Adult, are attached to the scheduled appointment so that they print on the Daily Schedule. This enables the practice to know before the patient is seen if the patient is a child or adult. The remaining eight codes are posted after the patient is seen, and they indicate what the outcome of the exam was by changing the patient's status.
Exam/Recall/Child changes the status to Observation/Recall. Exam/Child/Pending changes the status to Pending, and so on. If you want to track Child versus Adult exams, you must have procedure codes for both.