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Decision: unknown

 
The rules say that plans must pay for a medical service or item if regular Medicare would pay for it in this case. 
You can find this rule at 42 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Section 422.101. 
 
The rules say that providers must report services correctly. Procedures should be reported with the Current 
Procedural Terminology (CPT) code that describes the services performed. You can find this rule in the 
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Medicare National Correct Coding Initiative Policy Manual for 
Medicare Services, Chapter I(A). 
 
The rules say that the National Correct Coding Initiative (NCCI) was developed to prevent inappropriate 
payment of services that should not be reported together. NCCI edits are organized in a Column I/Column 2 
table. Each edit is a pair of codes that should not be reported together. If a provider reports two codes of an edit 
pair, only the Column 1 code is payable. For edits with a modifier indicator of 0, the Column 2 code cannot be 
paid regardless of whether a modifier is used. You can find this in the NCCI Manual, Chapter I. The rules say that effective for claims with dates of service July 1, 2007 and after, the non-Outpatient 
Prospective Payment System (OPPS) Outpatient Code Editor (OCE) will be integrated into the OPPS OCE. 
This integration will result in the routing of all institutional outpatient claims, including non-OPPS hospital 
claims, through a single integrated OCE eliminating the need to update two separate OCE software packages 
on a quarterly basis. The integrated OCE does not change the current logic that is applied to outpatient bill 
types that already pass through the OPPS OCE software. It merely expands the software usage to include non-
OPPS hospitals. This new software product will be referred to as the Integrated OCE (I/OCE). The I/OCE 
instructions and specifications are provided via Recurring Update Notifications. They are also posted on the 
Web at the following address 
https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Coding/OutpatientCodeEdit/OCEQtrReleaseSpecs.  
 
You can find this information in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Internet-Only Manual, 
Publication 100-04, Medicare Claims Processing Manual, Chapter 4, Section 40.1. 
 
The rules say that Edit 20 is invoked when the column II code of a code pair that is not allowed by NCCI even 
if an appropriate modifier is present is reported. The disposition for this edit is "line item rejection" (LIR), 
which means that the individual line is rejected, but the rest of the claim can be processed for payment. The 
line item can be corrected and resubmitted but cannot be appealed. You can find this information in the 
Integrated OCE Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Specifications V23.2 Effective July 1, 
2022. 
 
The rules say that Medicare plans must make reasonable and diligent efforts to gather and forward information 
to the Independent Review Entity (IRE). You can find this information in the Centers for Medicare and 
Medicaid Services, Internet Only Manual, Parts C & D Enrollee Grievances, Organization/Coverage 
Determinations, and Appeals Guidance Manual, Section 50.12.1. 
 
If you want to read these Medicare rules, you can go to this website www.medicareappeal.com. 
 
The Plan contract says that the Plan covers items and services in accordance with Medicare rules.