The American Medical Association (AMA) has announced it intends to create new Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes for telehealth services.
A new AMA-sponsored workgroup — the Telehealth Services Workgroup — gathered for the first time in October. The workgroup will serve as a facilitator for proposals to expand CPT’s current telehealth codes to include emerging services.
The workgroup is a committee comprised of more than 50 industry experts representing physicians, health professionals, telemedicine innovators and health insurers.
AMA President Steven J. Stack, MD, said, in a new release, “The CPT code set is the foundation upon which every participant in the medical community — physicians, hospitals, allied health professionals, payers and others — can efficiently share accurate information about medical services. Input from the Telehealth Services Workgroup will help the CPT code set reflect new technological and telehealth advancements available to mainstream clinical practice, and ensures the code set can fulfill its role as the health system’s common language for reporting contemporary medical procedures.”
Other responsibilities of the workgroup include developing new introductory language or modifying existing introductory language to guide coding of telehealth services and recommending solutions for the reporting of current non-telehealth services when using remote telehealth technology.
Need assistance identifying correct CPT and other codes? Check out PGM’s HCPCS code lookup tool and its other medical codes lookup resources.