Minor Skin Procedures in the Office - The Importance of Templates  

Minor skin procedures are performed by all types of physicians everyday in offices all across the country.  These include skin biopsies, lesion excisions, skin repairs, and lesion destructions.  Performing these procedures allows for valuable reimbursement for a primary care physicians office that otherwise may be billing mostly Evaluation and Management (E/M) codes.  This article will discuss documentation of these procedures and the use of templates to facilitate this documentation.

Issue #1: Documentation
One of the major problems with minor procedures performed in the office is that documentation is sometimes insufficient to support the services that were billed.  In most cases physicians have performed the service and bill for the service they performed, but the documentation does not support the service billed.  This leaves th...