Changelog

RSS

Every release and every piece of in-flight work for Medical Auto Coding. Filter by status, kind, or tag, then read the full notes below.

Every release note on this page with its delivery status and its change kind, closest to shipping first, then most recently released.
Status	Kind	What changed	Version	Ticket	Date
Released	Fix	Anesthesia: post-op pain rounds are now coded as the round visit, not a repeat of the surgery	No version	No ticket	August 26, 2026

Released

August 26, 2026Fix
Anesthesia: post-op pain rounds are now coded as the round visit, not a repeat of the surgery
Work processed after August 26, 2026 at 12:00 UTC carries this change.

August 26, 2026Fix

Anesthesia: post-op pain rounds are now coded as the round visit, not a repeat of the surgery

Work processed after August 26, 2026 at 12:00 UTC carries this change.

What you will see

Many practices send the comprehensive anesthesia record for an acute pain service round. That record still contains the original surgery documentation. Before this change, the autocoder coded the SURGERY from those packets a second time. That created a duplicate of a claim you had already billed on the surgery day.

Now the autocoder detects the pain-round visit and codes THAT visit:

01996, one unit when the provider managed an epidural or spinal catheter that was still in place, on a day after catheter placement. This is a flat daily fee. It has no anesthesia time and no physical status modifier. That is correct for 01996.
Subsequent hospital care (99231-99233) when the provider rounded on a peripheral nerve catheter, for example an interscalene or adductor canal catheter. Payer rules do not allow 01996 for these catheters.
No charge when the visit does not support a billable service, for example a check on the same day the catheter was placed. The claim then carries the alert "No Billable Pain-Round Service" with the exact reason.

The claim date of service is the date of the ROUND, not the surgery date. The primary diagnosis is acute postprocedural pain (G89.18).

What to look out for

Pain-round claims with 01996 show one unit and NO minutes. Do not add time to these lines.
If a packet mixes surgery documentation with a partial pain-round note and the autocoder cannot decide which visit to bill, the claim holds with the alert "Possible Pain-Round Packet Coded as Surgery". A person must confirm the correct visit before the claim releases.
If the record does not show that the surgeon handed pain management to the anesthesia team, the claim carries the alert "Surgeon Transfer of Pain Management Not Documented". Ask the practice to document the surgeon's request.

Review gate, on by default

Pain-round visits are infrequent, and the one-page rounding forms that carry them lose checkbox marks in text extraction. So by default, every claim from a packet that contains pain-round content waits for a coder before it bills. The claim carries the alert "Post-Op Pain Rounds Review Gate". The autocoder still codes the visit. The coder confirms one of three outcomes and releases or corrects the claim:

a routine post-anesthesia check, which is not separately billable;
daily management of a neuraxial catheter (01996);
a separately necessary pain visit with a documented surgeon transfer (hospital E/M).

If your facility trusts the pain-round coding, ask your HANK representative to turn the gate off, or to narrow it to only the claims the pain-round lane coded.

Alerts added

Post-Op Pain Rounds Review Gate; Possible Pain-Round Packet Coded as Surgery; No Billable Pain-Round Service; Pain-Round Date Not Documented; Pain Rounds on More Than One Day; Surgeon Transfer of Pain Management Not Documented; Catheter Insertion Date Not Documented; Pain-Round Coverage Is Payer Variable; Pain-Round Evidence Without a Citation.