Five takeaways from the 2022 Current Procedural Terminology updates

Staying on top of changes to Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes is critical, because working with outdated codes can easily lead to denied claims or delayed reimbursement.

To help prevent these problems, we're highlighting five key takeaways from the new CPT code updates, which became effective January 1.

1. This year's updates encompass many changes including: 249 additions, 63 deletions, and 93 revisions. That's a total of 405 changes, resulting in 10,819 codes in the 2022 edition of the CPT code set.
2. COVID-19 continues to dominate healthcare, as new variants emerge, and vaccines and boosters are top-of-mind. This year's update includes eight new codes representing the various products from multiple vaccine manufactures, as well as 20 new administration codes for injection itself. The COVID-19 administration codes reflect the different doses and, as always, two codes are needed to document vaccination: one for the product itself and one for the act of administrating the inoculation.
3. For cardiovascular practitioners, a new code (33509) now denotes endoscopic arterial harvest during a coronary bypass, or CABG, procedure. The instructional notes for subsections combined arterial-venous grafting for coronary arterybypass and arterial grafting for coronary artery bypass have been revised to identify both the open and endoscopic method of an arterial harvest as separately reportable.
4. For gynecologists, a new procedure was introduced at the CPT Symposium. Several codes were released in this edition for documentation relating to uterine transplantation. Code 0664T denotes a cadaver donor hysterectomy, while code 0665T and 0666T describe a living donor hysterectomy, open or laparoscopic/robotic, respectively.
5. Finally, development of novel endoscopic procedures and treatments continue to evolve and be recognized with CPT codes. This year the peroral endoscopic myotomy, or POEM, procedure was recognized with an official CPT code, 43497. This procedure helps patients with difficulty moving food into the stomach due to poor functioning of the lower portion of the esophagus. While there were previously codes for the laparoscopic version of the procedure, endoscopy allows for the procedure to be less invasive due to an oral approach.

To learn more about this year's CPT code updates, watch our on-demand webinar, Highlights from the 2022 CPT code set updatehere.

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