The following is the response I recived from a coding specialist at the
American Academy of Dermatology. I am trying not to be concerned that the
reference is 6 years old but I think it clears up what we thought to be true.
88342 for IHC
88314 other “special stains”
Here is the description for 88314 according to November 2006 cpt Assistant
article, the companion piece to the AMA CPT Code Book.
The work of processing and interpreting one routine stain is included in the
procedure 17311 <javascript:cptaaCPTPopup('17311')> - 17315
<javascript:cptaaCPTPopup('17315')> . This stain is usually hematoxylin and
eosin, or toluidine blue. If other special stains are necessary after one
routine stain, then the code for special stains may be used (88314
<javascript:cptaaCPTPopup('88314')> ) as well as immunoperoxidase stains (88342
<javascript:cptaaCPTPopup('88342')> ) or decalcification procedures (88311
<javascript:cptaaCPTPopup('88311')> ). Special stains are not typically used
and in most Mohs practices are of low frequency. Each stain is reported only
once per block, not per slide or per layer (stage).
AMA CPT definition of a Block: Tissue flattened by cutting into pieces,
embedded, and frozen in mounting medium used by histotechnologists to embed
tissue for frozen sections.
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