CPT code is a medical code system that records medical, surgical, and diagnostic procedures and services to institutions such as doctors, health insurance companies, and accrediting agencies. CPT stands for Current Procedural Terminology. It is the language spoken between providers and payers or refers to a set of medical codes used by physicians, allied health professionals, non-physician practitioners, hospitals, outpatient facilities, and laboratories to describe the procedures and services they perform. CPT codes are an essential component of the process of medical billing services and procedures for reimbursement. More specifically, CPT codes are used in reporting procedures and services to private and public payers to receive compensation for medical services.
Recognizing CPT Codes
The characters that make up a CPT code are as follows:
The vast majority of codes are numerical. However, some codes contain a fifth character that is an alphabetic representation, such as an A, F, T, or U.
Examples include:
- 33275
- 0004A
- 3006F
- 0510T
- 0079U
Types of CPT Codes
The CPT’s evidence-based codes accurately cover the full range of healthcare billing services. These were designated as a national coding set for services and procedures performed by physicians and other health care professionals by the United States Department of Health and Human Services following HIPAA. CPT codes always include five digits and, depending on the category, may consist entirely of numbers or a combination of letters and numbers. CPT code descriptors are clinically oriented and use common standards to facilitate a shared understanding across a broad group of users throughout the clinical health care paradigm. There are several distinct categories of CPT codes, including:
Category I
These codes each include a set of descriptors associated with a particular operation or service. The codes run from 00100 to 99499, and they are often grouped into subcategories depending on the kind of surgery or service rendered and the patient’s anatomy.
Category II
These supplementary codes, which may be either alphabetic or numerical, are utilized for monitoring and measuring performance. Their use is discretionary and does not constitute a precondition for accurate coding.
Category III
These are provisional alphabetic and numeric designations for brand-new methods, services, and technologies that are still being developed. They were developed for data collection, evaluation, and in some cases, payment of new services and processes that do not now fulfill the requirements for a Category I code.
PLA Codes
These codes were recently introduced to the CPT code set and reflect unique clinical laboratory analyses. These analyses may either be supplied by a single laboratory or licensed or sold to several supplying labs that are cleared or authorized by the FDA.
ADLTs and CDLTs, as defined by the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, are included in this category, although their number is not restricted to those two types.
Learning How to Use CPT Codes
There’s a lot of information on coding standards, rules, notes, and guidelines for rookie CPT coders. To do procedural coding, it is essential to understand anatomy and medical language. To pick the correct code, it is necessary to interpret the clinical documentation and code description to understand a particular process, how the physician conducted it, and which code descriptor represents the most significant detail of the treatment. There must be a solid understanding of anatomy and medical language since physicians may use CPT codes from any area of the code book to provide services. They are not constrained to reporting just the codes that apply to their specialty. A primary care coder must give an appropriate X-ray code if a primary care physician reads a radiology X-ray, although X-ray codes are classified under radiology.
Guidelines for CPT Coding
The American Medical Association (AMA) makes CPT coding standards available. These recommendations describe when and how to assign codes, which codes may and cannot be reported together, and other criteria essential to compliance coding. Before trying to assign codes within a particular classification, it is imperative that you first familiarize yourself with the CPT criteria that are outlined in each section, subsection, subheading, category, and subcategory of the CPT manual. Consider getting the appropriate training and credentials before accepting a job that requires calculating and reporting CPT codes on medical claims. This is an equally crucial step before taking on such a duty. Moreover, this is the most excellent approach to guarantee that the coding is accurate and that your company receives the most compensation possible.
Appending Modifiers to CPT Codes
It is necessary to be knowledgeable about CPT® modifiers to report CPT codes properly. An explanation of what a CPT modifier is would be much appreciated. There are three types of modifiers: numeric and alphabetical. CPT modifiers are sometimes added to CPT codes to characterize better the service or process being performed in various settings. For example, an operation on the right side of the body might be indicated by specific modifiers. When a physician provides a service or operation, it is stated with a modifier like “additional time and effort.” Every circumstance a coder can meet would make CPT code books prohibitively vast and unwieldy.
Expanding the capacity to report the unique conditions of services and processes may be done with a few simple modifications. As with CPT codes, modifiers for CPT® coding are created and updated yearly by the AMA. In the CPT code book, several modifiers are mentioned. Payers may apply modification criteria differently, so be sure to double-check with each one before submitting a claim. Also, remember that the American Medical Association (AMA) notes in the code book that some codes are “free” from specific modifiers.
Relating CPT codes to other codes sets
The distinction between HCPCS Level II and CPT® codes might be a challenge. Medical procedure coding under the HCPCS system is what it means by the acronym. Level II of the HCPCS system is what we refer to as “HCPCS codes” or “Level II HCPCS codes.” The CPT code set is part of the Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System’s Level I. Understanding that HCPCS Level II starts after CPT is the most important lesson from this course. It was approximately 1980 that the AMA and CMS began working together to create a new set of codes to classify items that CPT did not already cover. This code set was initially used for Medicare patients, but other payers found it beneficial and started requiring doctors to use it.
For instance, orthotic and prosthetic operations, hearing and vision aids, emergency medical services (EMS), medical and surgical supplies, medications, nutritional therapy, and durable medical equipment all fall within the HCPCS Level II codes. In January, CMS released the most significant modifications to the HCPCS Level II code set.
What Are the Benefits of Using CPT Codes?
Healthcare professionals must use the CPT coding system to accurately track and bill for the appropriate operations for the appropriate patients. There would be no way for hospitals to keep track of this information if they did not have a code set to which they could match the services they provide. When there are issues linked to CPT coding, there is a possibility that services will be paid wrongly, there will be a misunderstanding between departments, and there may be other problems as well. This results in significant revenue integrity problems, which may impact the whole revenue cycle of a medical system. Therefore, it is essential to adhere to and stringently audit your coding process to guarantee that mistakes of this kind do not arise and that they are quickly remedied if they do occur.