Question

State the purpose of the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes and discuss some of the ways these codes are used throughout the United States.  (b) What critical link do CPT and ICD-10 codes provide when put together, and (c) why is their accuracy so important? Minimum word count for parts 150 words.

Answer 1

Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code:It  is a medical code set that is used to report medical, surgical, and diagnostic procedures and services to entities such as physicians, health insurance companies and accreditation organizations

There are three types of CPT codes: Category 1, Category 2 and Category 3

Category 1: Procedures and contemporary medical practices,it include

• evaluation and management
• anesthesiology
• surgery
• radiology
• pathology and laboratory
• medicine

Category 2: Clinical Laboratory Services

The Category 2 CPT medical code set consists of the supplementary tracking codes that are used for performance measures and are intended to help collect information about the quality of care delivered. The use of this medical code set is optional and is not a substitute for Category 1 codes.

Category 3: Emerging technologies, services and procedures

The Category 3 CPT code list consists of temporary codes that cover emerging technologies, services and procedures. They differ from the Category 1 medical CPT codes list in that they identify services that may not be widely performed by healthcare professionals, may not have FDA approval and also may not have proven clinical efficacy. To be eligible, the service or procedure must be involved in ongoing and planned research. The purpose of these CPT codes is to help researchers track emerging technologies and services.

2)

CPT code list vs. ICD codes

Simply put, the difference between CPT codes and ICD codes are that CPT codes are related to procedures and ICD codes are related to diagnoses.

CPT codes, or procedural codes, describe what kind of procedure a patient has received while ICD codes, or diagnostic codes, describe any diseases, illnesses or injuries a patient may have.

3)The six most commonly used CPT codes for medical billing are the following:

• new patient office visit codes: codes used to bill for patients that have never been seen by any physician in the same specialty within the same group in the last three years;
• established patient office visit codes: used to bill for patients that have been seen by a physician in the same specialty within the same group before in the last three years;
• initial hospital care for new or established patients codes: used to bill for patients that are admitted to a hospital;
• subsequent hospital care codes;
• emergency department visit codes; and
• office consultation codes: used for patients seeking the opinion of a physician at the request of another physician

How CPT codes are formatted.

CPT codes are made up of five characters. These characters could be numeric and alphanumeric depending on which category -- the division of the CPT code set -- the CPT code is in.