Dive Brief:
- The American Medical Association's (AMA) new CPT Telehealth Services Workgroup recently met in person for the first time last week to create new codes for telehealth visits.
- The group will report to the AMA's Common Procedural Terminology (CPT) Editorial Panel, which creates and curates the codes for physician services billing.
- Although there are CPT codes in place for in-person visits that can be billed to Medicare by adding a "GT" modifier, many telehealth services will require additional codes - such as for bundled payments for patient-centered care.
Dive Insight:
Dr. Barbara Levy, the workgroup co-chair and vice president for health policy at the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told Modern Healthcare, there need to be code sets for those specific telehealth services.
The work group will be divided into subgroups and become familiar with future telehealth possibilities and triage existing telemedicine use cases to determine those in most immediate need of codes. It will then develop code recommendations as soon as possible for the editorial boards, according to Modern Healthcare.
A 2014 Deloitte study estimated there would be 75 million telehealth visits in the U.S., with an increase of up to 300 million visits per year. And a Tower Watson 2014 survey showed that 37% of employers planned to offer employees telemedicine consultations this year, with another 34% planning to offer the same by 2017, Modern Healthcare reported.
CMS added additional reimbursable telehealth visits this year including annual visits, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and long-term evaluation and management services, all of which will need new codes. The telehealth workgroup will get assistance from more than 50 subject matter experts. Dr. Steven Stack, AMA president, said in a news release, "Tapping into the clinical and technological expertise of the healthcare community and innovators produces the practical enhancements that CPT needs to reflect the coding demands of the modern healthcare system."