- Services or procedures are performed by many health care professionals across the country
- FDA approval is documented or imminent with a given CPT cycle
- The service or procedure has a proven clinical efficacy
- The service or procedure has relevance for research, either ongoing or planned
- 0208T Pure tone audiometry (threshold), automated;air only
- 0209T air and bone
- 0210T Speech audiometry threshold, automated;
- 0211T with speech recognition
- 0212T Comprehensive audiometry threshold evaluation and speech recognition (0209T, 0211T combined), automated
Audiologists should report these new Category III codes when automated audiometry is performed. Of course, for manual audiometric testing by an audiologist or physician, 92551-92557 should be used. Bekesy audiometry codes 92560 and 92561 are also available when appropriate. According to the AMA, the "assignment of a CPT Category III code to a service does not indicate that it is experimental or of limited utility, but only that the service or technology is new and is being tracked for data collection." The AMA points out that, "in the Final Rule for the 2002 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (Federal Register, Thursday, November 1, 2001), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) stated that they believed that Category III codes 'will serve a useful purpose' and that payment for the service is at the discretion of the Carriers, but that the codes could be paid after entered into the computer systems."
Please contact reimbursement@asha.org with questions or comments.
[1] CPT is a registered trademark of the American Medical Association
Taken from www.asha.org/News/.