Does your practice perform any minor or major procedures? If so, this post is for you! This post relates to the global package, and not to determining the risk of additional diagnostic testing or treatment in an E/M service.

Primary care practices and urgent care centers should pay special attention to these issues and avoid these four, costly errors.

1) Thinking a major procedure is a minor procedure

If you have heard me speak about the global surgical package you know how I define a major procedure. A major procedure is anything that you do on me!

Sadly, neither CPT nor CMS accepts my definition. Global days are assigned in the Medicare Fee Schedule. Although CPT doesn’t discuss global days, insurers and practices use these definitions:

Minor Procedure:
a procedure with 0 or 10 global days

Major procedure :
a procedure with 90 global days