Hospitals commonly use the chargemaster to code lab procedures. Remember, with APCs, lab procedures are paid by Medicare under a fee schedule. Let s look at code 80048 together. Note that each of the panels includes combinations of tests that can occur separately or together with one another. Qualitative detection tells the physician if a drug is present in the person s body.
Quantitative detection tells the pathologist how much of the drug is present in the person s body.
These tests are quantitative unless otherwise stated. See coding book for examples of tests. There are six levels of surgical pathology, each of which represents the degree of difficulty involved in the physician s work evaluating each specimen and the type of tissue being examined. I surgical pathology, gross examination only. Gross examination would be that which is visible to the naked eye.