MSS03: TRANSLATING MEDICAL CODING TO DEPLOYMENT READINESS: MILITARY-CIVILIAN PARTNERSHIP SURGEON PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS BY A NOVEL CPT TO ICTL MAP
Talia R Arcieri, MD; Michael D Cobler-Lichter, MD; Jessica M Delamater, MD, MPH; Ana M Reyes, MD; Nicholas Namias, MD, MBA; Carl I Schulman, MD, PhD; Vincente S Nelson, MD; Mark D Buzzelli, MD; Stephen Russell, PhD; Kenneth G Proctor, PhD; Paul J Wetstein, MD; Division of Trauma, Surgical Critical Care and Burns, Daughtry Family Department of Surgery, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine; Jackson Memorial Hospital Ryder Trauma Center and US Army Trauma Training Center, Miami, Florida
Objectives: The General Surgeon Individual Critical Task List (ICTL) is utilized by the U.S. Army to ensure readiness of surgeons before deployment. However, no system currently exists to correlate billing codes applied by civilian medical centers with individual critical tasks (ICTs). This study aimed to create a comprehensive map correlating medical billing codes with ICTs with utilization of the map to quantify ICT performance by two embedded military surgeons at a civilian trauma center.
Methods: The CPT 2024 Professional Edition (Current Procedural Terminology) was utilized to develop a map correlating medical billing codes with the General Surgeon ICTL. The billing logs of two embedded military surgeons (Surgeons A and B) at a single hospital network from May 2020 to September 2024 were reviewed with utilization of the map to quantify frequency of completion of each ICT.
Results: There were 4,116 procedural and critical care CPT codes logged during the study period. Of these, 3,219 were associated with one or more ICTs for a total of 3,378 mapped CPT-ICT associations. Surgeon A completed 2,020 ICTs, and most frequently performed Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma (FAST) (55.9%), laparotomy (6.3%), and chest tube placement (3.2%). Surgeon B completed 1,358 ICTs and most frequently performed FAST (29.2%), laparotomy (8.8%), and initial evaluation and resuscitation of a trauma patient (3.3%). Table 1 displays the subset of ICTs performed by Surgeons A and B with the total number of mapped CPT codes for these ICTs.
Conclusion: Utilization of a map correlating CPT codes with ICTs allows the procedural performance of U.S. Army surgeons at civilian centers to be simply and directly translated to the U.S. Army’s readiness metric. These military surgeons each performed procedures fulfilling ICTs over 1,300 times. These results demonstrate the utility of this novel map and highlight the strength of the military-civilian partnership in maintaining surgeon readiness for combat.
