The revisions to remote physiologic monitoring and remote therapeutic monitoring codes were considered at last week’s meeting of the American Medical Association’s CPT Editorial Panel, which includes health care professionals and representatives from medical specialty societies, hospitals, payers, and government. After discussion, the panel decided to postpone a vote on the merits of the revisions while various updates proposed during the meeting could be incorporated. The next editorial panel meeting is in September.
The revisions aimed to expand the existing codes, for example by making it possible to bill for supplying devices when 2 to 15 days of data were transmitted in a month or when 16-30 days were transmitted. Today, providers can only bill with at least 16 days. In addition, the changes would have added codes for remote care management for 11 to 20 minutes a month. Before, providers had to hit 20 minutes to bill.
There’s a broad feeling that remote monitoring codes should be updated because they’re too restrictive and don’t cover a broad class of potentially valuable use cases. For example, it may not be necessary or productive for someone in a weight management program to step on a scale 16 times in a month.
Source: STAT: Health Tech