CPT Code 01926: Anesthesia for therapeutic interventional radiological procedures

Key takeaways

CPT Code 01926 covers anesthesia for therapeutic interventional radiology on the arterial system, at intracranial, intracardiac, or aortic sites.

CMS assigns the code eight base units, and time units are billed at one unit per 15 minutes, rounded to one decimal place.

A 125-minute case comes to 16.3 units, which pays $364.79 in the Chicago locality and $318.34 in Alabama under the CY 2026 schedule.

The modifier table below covers all 14 modifiers that can land on an 01926 claim, including the ones Medicare bundles and pays nothing extra for.

Practice management software like Pabau keeps anesthesia times, modifiers, and forms on one record, so claims leave with their documentation attached.

CPT Code 01926 is the anesthesia code for therapeutic interventional radiological procedures involving the arterial system, at intracranial, intracardiac, or aortic sites. It carries eight base units and is paid on anesthesia time.

A code lookup returns that descriptor and stops there. What the code means in practice sits in three details, and each one can sink a claim on its own.

Intent has to be therapeutic rather than diagnostic. Access has to be arterial rather than venous. The site has to be intracranial, intracardiac, or aortic, not peripheral.

Below is the CY 2026 payment math, worked from CMS figures, plus a complete modifier table scoped to this code. The last sections cover the NCCI edits that quietly catch 01926 claims in interventional radiology suites.

CPT Code 01926: Definition and clinical scope

CPT Code 01926 describes anesthesia for therapeutic interventional radiological procedures involving the arterial system, specifically intracranial, intracardiac, or aortic. The American Medical Association maintains the descriptor, and the code sits in the anesthesia for radiological procedures subsection.

That subsection now runs 01916 to 01942. CPT deleted 01935 and 01936 in 2022 and replaced them with 01937 through 01942. Older references that cap the series at 01936 are out of date.

The word therapeutic does most of the work in that descriptor. Diagnostic-only arteriography belongs to 01916 instead. Once the interventionalist treats something through the arterial access, 01926 is in play.

Clinical procedures the code covers

CPT Code 01926 covers three families of therapeutic arterial work: intracranial neurointervention, intracardiac structural heart procedures, and aortic endovascular repair. Each sits in the official descriptor for a reason, and each carries its own physiological demands.

• Intracranial procedures: cerebral aneurysm coiling, arteriovenous malformation embolization, mechanical thrombectomy for acute stroke, and carotid stenting that requires intracranial access.
• Intracardiac procedures: transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), transcatheter mitral and tricuspid repair, left atrial appendage occlusion, and other structural heart work in a hybrid room.
• Aortic procedures: thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR), endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR), and catheter-based treatment of aortic dissection.

Coders often hunt for a separate CPT code for general anesthesia on these cases. There is no such code. 01926 is reported whether the anesthetic is general or monitored anesthesia care, and the QS modifier flags monitored care for information only.

Place of service matters just as much. These procedures run in facility settings, so a non-facility place-of-service code on the claim will misprice the line before anyone reviews it.

Anesthesia billing formula: Base units, time units, and conversion factor

Anesthesia payment for CPT Code 01926 is the sum of base units and time units, multiplied by the locality conversion factor. Surgical RVUs never enter the calculation.

The formula: (base units + time units) x conversion factor = allowed amount

The ASA version of the formula adds modifying units for physical status and qualifying circumstances. Medicare bundles those into the anesthesia code and pays nothing extra, so they only change the math on commercial claims.

Base units

CMS assigns CPT Code 01926 eight base units. That is the highest value in the arterial group, above 01924 at five units and 01925 at seven.

Base units reach your Medicare Administrative Contractor through the annual HCPCS file, and CMS publishes them on its Anesthesiologists Center page. Check the current file rather than a cached figure from a coding forum. Inflated base unit values are a quiet source of overbilling.

Time units

One time unit equals 15 minutes of anesthesia time, and your MAC rounds the result to one decimal place. Partial units count, so 125 minutes is 8.3 units rather than 8.

CMS defines anesthesia time as the period the practitioner is present with the patient. It starts when they begin preparing the patient in the procedure room. It ends when the patient can safely be placed under postoperative care.

You report minutes on the claim, not units. Blocks of time either side of an interruption can be added together, provided anesthesia care was continuous across them.

Conversion factor

The CY 2026 national anesthesia conversion factor is $20.49754 per unit for most physicians. Qualifying participants in Advanced Alternative Payment Models get $20.599835 instead.

A second national figure is new for 2026. Billing teams that carry a single number forward from 2025 will misestimate half their roster. Neither figure is what you collect, because CMS then adjusts the conversion factor for each of the 100-plus payment localities.

Worked example

Take a TEVAR under general anesthesia in a hybrid room, with 125 minutes of documented anesthesia time, billed in the Chicago locality. Here is the full calculation.

Two things in that table trip billing teams up. Rounding time units down to a whole number would have cost $6.71 on this single case. And the same procedure, coded identically, pays $46.45 less in Alabama than in Chicago.

CPT Code 01926 modifiers

Every 01926 claim carries exactly one payment modifier, chosen from AA, QY, QK, QX, QZ, and AD. That choice decides whether you collect the full allowance, half of it, or three base units.

The informational modifiers sit on top of that choice. QS, G8, G9, and GC change nothing about payment, but they explain the case to the payer and support medical necessity on review.

That last row is worth a second look. Coding an aortic dissection patient as P4 earns two extra units from a commercial payer and nothing at all from Medicare. Teams that bill both need the physical status recorded either way, because the commercial side will not pay retroactively for it.

Commercial payers also write their own medical direction rules. Check each contract before you assume Medicare’s percentages carry across. The rules above come from the Medicare Claims Processing Manual, Chapter 12.

Medicare reimbursement rates for CPT Code 01926

There is no single national Medicare rate for CPT Code 01926, because CMS adjusts the anesthesia conversion factor for every payment locality. The table below prices the same 125-minute case, at 16.3 units, across seven CY 2026 localities.

Those figures assume AA or QZ, where one provider collects the full allowance. Under QK or QY the allowance splits in half, so the Chicago case pays roughly $182.40 to the anesthesiologist and the same to the CRNA.

Under AD the picture changes sharply. Medical supervision drops the claim to three base units regardless of the code’s assigned eight, which turns a $364.79 case into a fraction of that. Verify your own locality on the CMS Physician Fee Schedule lookup before you quote a number internally.

Commercial contracts usually copy the unit structure and set their own conversion factor, often above Medicare’s. For procedure code fee schedules outside Medicare, the contracted rate governs everything above.

Documentation requirements for an 01926 claim

Five records support an 01926 claim. Those are the pre-anesthesia evaluation, the start and stop times, the intraoperative monitoring record, the post-anesthesia note, and the medical direction attestation. Missing any of them turns a clean claim into an audit finding.

• Pre-anesthesia evaluation: history, medications, airway assessment, and the ASA physical status. Those ASA codes drive commercial unit values, so record P3, P4, or P5 even when Medicare ignores them. Functional capacity results, such as a CPET report, support that status on aortic cases.
• Anesthesia start and stop times: exact clock times, taken from preparation in the procedure room to safe handoff. Anesthesia coding for this code is built on minutes, not on procedure length.
• Intraoperative monitoring record: continuous vitals, drugs given, fluids, and who was present at each stage of the case.
• Post-anesthesia note: the patient’s condition at handoff, plus any complication or event worth flagging.
• Medical direction attestation: when you bill QK, QY, or QX, the record must show all seven CMS conditions were met on that case.

Structured digital forms for pre-anesthesia evaluations make these elements hard to skip, because the form will not close without them. They also make an audit response a search rather than a hunt through paper. The same build rules that govern medical forms apply in anesthesia settings.

Those records also sit inside your HIPAA compliance policies, so access and retention rules cover them too. Any service billed on documented minutes needs the same discipline. IV therapy practices put start and stop times on the form for that reason.

NCCI bundling rules

Only one anesthesia code from the 01916 to 01942 range is payable per radiologic encounter. That holds even when the interventionalist performs several procedures in the same session. The rule sits in Chapter 2 of the CMS National Correct Coding Initiative policy manual.

Three bundling traps show up repeatedly on this code.

• Transesophageal echo for guidance (93355): bundled into the anesthesia service when the anesthesia practitioner performs it. This is the classic TAVR denial, because the echo feels like separate work.
• Monitoring catheters through the interventional access site: the interventionalist places the catheter, and it is then used for monitoring. Neither party reports the placement separately.
• Needle and catheter introduction (36000, 36010 to 36015): integral to the anesthesia package, along with ECG, oximetry, and drug administration codes.

Some services do survive the edits. Swan-Ganz catheter insertion, central venous pressure lines, emergency intubation, and critical care visits are separately payable when medically necessary. Read the 2026 NCCI policy chapter before you add anything to an 01926 claim.

Device codes are a separate question again. The vascular closure device at the access site and an insertable retrieval device are billed by the facility, under codes such as C1760 and C1773. Neither belongs on the anesthesia claim.

Related anesthesia CPT codes

The anesthesia CPT codes closest to 01926 are 01916, 01924, and 01925, and picking between them comes down to intent and anatomical site. The base units differ enough that a wrong pick costs money on every case.

The 01925 row is the one worth memorizing. Carotid stenting sounds intracranial, but unless the intervention reaches the intracranial circulation it belongs to 01925 at seven base units. That single unit is about $22 per case at most localities.

The same subsection also holds the venous and spine neighbors. Here is what sits either side of 01926, and what separates each one.

• 01920 (7 base units): cardiac catheterization with coronary angiography and ventriculography, excluding the Swan-Ganz catheter.
• 01922 (7 base units): non-invasive imaging or radiation therapy, with no vascular access at all.
• 01930 (5 base units): therapeutic interventional radiology on the venous or lymphatic system, not otherwise specified.
• 01931 (7 base units): intrahepatic or portal circulation, which is where a TIPS procedure belongs.
• 01932 (6 base units): intrathoracic or jugular venous work.
• 01933 (7 base units): intracranial venous or lymphatic work. Easy to confuse with 01926, but the access is venous.
• 01937 to 01942 (4 to 5 base units): percutaneous image-guided spine and spinal cord procedures, split by diagnostic or therapeutic intent and by level.

When the procedure note leaves the site ambiguous, query the interventionalist rather than guessing. The same specificity discipline applies to other code families, including coaching CPT codes.

Common billing errors on 01926 claims

Most 01926 denials come from six repeatable errors, and every one of them is catchable before the claim leaves the practice. Building the checks into the workflow beats chasing remittances.

• The wrong base unit value: several coding forums circulate inflated figures for this code. CMS assigns eight, and billing more is an overpayment waiting to be recouped.
• Rounding time units down: reporting 8 units for 125 minutes instead of 8.3 quietly underpays every long case you bill.
• Modifier mismatches: QX with no matching QK or QY, or AA on a case that was medically directed. Both are visible to the payer’s edits.
• Confusing 01925 with 01926: carotid and coronary work belongs to 01925. Intracranial, intracardiac, and aortic sites belong here.
• NCCI conflicts: billing 93355 for guidance echo, or a second anesthesia code for a second procedure in the same radiologic encounter.
• Place-of-service errors: a non-facility code on a hospital or ASC case misprices the line before anyone looks at it.

Compliance management software with claim scrubbing catches modifier mismatches and NCCI conflicts automatically. Folding anesthesia-specific checks into your existing HIPAA compliance checklist keeps the review in one place rather than two.

The three checks below are worth building into your pre-submission routine. They catch the errors above while the claim is still yours to fix.

How Pabau supports anesthesia billing compliance

The three denial reasons above all start in the same place. The anesthesia time lives in one system, and the modifier decision lives in someone’s head or a rota. The claim is then assembled in a third tool from whatever made it across.

Practice management software like Pabau closes that handoff by keeping the record and the claim in one place. Pre-anesthesia evaluations, intraoperative records, and post-anesthesia notes are built as digital forms on the patient record. Nobody retypes a start time into a separate billing screen.

Automated workflows then hold a claim until its documentation is complete. If the post-anesthesia note is missing, or the medical direction attestation was never signed, the claim stays put and the biller sees why. Esteem Life Medical Group uses Pabau the same way, keeping records and compliance in one system.

For a group running several 01926 cases a week, that turns denial prevention into a default rather than a habit. Surgical specialties that bill anesthesia in-house, including plastic surgery practices, get the same protection. Your billers spend their week on the exceptions instead of reworking claims that should never have gone out.

Practices already on practice management software but billing anesthesia separately carry the reconciliation cost every month end. Bringing both onto one system removes that step. It is also why teams comparing medical practice management software rate pre-submission scrubbing so highly.

Send anesthesia claims with the documentation attached

Pabau keeps anesthesia times, ASA status, and medical direction attestations on the patient record, and holds a claim until they are complete. Fewer modifier and time-documentation denials, and less rework at month end.

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Conclusion

CPT Code 01926 is easy to understand and hard to bill consistently. The payment depends on three moving parts, and those parts live in three different places.

Fix the base unit value first, at eight. Then fix the decimal on your time units. Then make the modifier follow the provider arrangement recorded for that day, rather than whatever the group usually bills. Those three changes recover more than any appeals process will.

The trade-off worth remembering is the locality spread. The same case pays $53.46 more in Manhattan than in Alabama, so a national benchmark tells your finance team very little. Book a demo to see how Pabau keeps anesthesia documentation and claims on one record for high-acuity procedure billing.

Continue your research

Need to see how anesthesia and procedure codes interact? IVF CPT codes shows how the two sit together in a specialty with its own unit rules.

Billing the devices used in the same lab? C1732 covers electrophysiology catheter billing, which the facility reports rather than the anesthesia practice.

Coding a transesophageal device on a structural heart case? C1756 sets out the billing rules for a transesophageal pacing catheter.

Documenting arterial disease before a case? Ankle brachial index covers how to perform, interpret, and document the test.

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