Wait a minnit - I'm getting confused here -

Jennifer MacDonald wrote:
>>Our pathologist charge [sic] an 88300 for a gross only.<<

You mean your pathologist looks at a little piece of tissue in a rapid urease 
test (Clo-Test) capsule, employs the full force of four years of medical 
school and five years of residency to determine that its color has changed 
from yellow to red, dictates a diagnosis reflecting this determination, and 
charges an 88300 (gross examination by pathologist, without microscopic 
examination) for this?

I've never seen such a thing, in many laboratories. Usually I have to either 
make a phone call or walk across the hall to a microbiology lab to find out 
that a Clo-Test has been done (since I like to include the Clo-Test report in 
my results, along with the report of my microscopic examination for 
Helicobacter.) In some hospitals, the gastroenterologist doing the endoscopy 
pockets the Clo-Test, reads it himself if he remembers to, and bills the CPT 
for it. Or a nurse may read it in the endoscopy lab.

I don't like the idea of doing a pathologist's gross-only here. In the first 
place, it's ridiculous and unproductive. In the second place, eventually one 
of these patients, by the luck of the draw, will get a cancer of the stomach 
(or perhaps the anus, given the current propensities of juries in the USA), 
and at that point I don't want such a report in the patient's chart.

The proprietary name "Clo-Test" (of Australian origin, I think) must bring 
about many a grin in middle European laboratories - where it would express 
what I think ought to be done with these specimens!

Bob Richmond
Samurai Pathologist
Knoxville TN