May we report moderate sedation services provided by a physician other than the health care professional performing insertion of a tunneled centrally inserted central venous catheter without a subcutaneous port or pump in a 12-year-old child when the procedure is performed in an outpatient department (99148–99150)? Procedure code 36558 is included in Appendix G of the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) manual.
Because guidelines for reporting codes 99148–99150 seem to be somewhat confusing, we sought clarification from the American Medical Association's (AMA) CPT Editorial Research and Development Department. Following is a summary of the CPT guidelines for codes 99148–99150 followed by the response from the AMA.
Codes 99148–99150 are reported by a second physician who provides moderate sedation to a patient in the facility setting (eg, hospital, outpatient hospital/ambulatory surgery center, skilled nursing facility) while another physician performs the procedure or diagnostic study. In this case, the second physician...
