When desiring to indicate a distinct procedural service the physician may need to indicate a procedure or service was distinct or independent from other services performed on the same day.

This may represent a different session or patient encounter, different procedure or surgery, different site, or organ system, separate incision/excision, or separate injury (or area of injury in extensive injuries).

Multiple services provided to a patient on one day by the same provider may appear to be incorrectly coded, when in fact the services may have been performed as reported.

Because these circumstances cannot be easily identified, a modifier was established to permit claims of such a nature to bypass correct coding edits.

The addition of this modifier to a procedure code indicates that the procedure represents a distinct procedure or service from others billed on the same date of service representing a different session, different surgery, different anatomical site or organ system, separate incision/excision, different agent, different lesion, or different injury or area of injury (in extensive injuries).

allow gis to show you