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Four new auditory rehabilitation codes are included in the Current Procedural Terminology Codes (CPT) beginning in 2006 because of the efforts by audiologists on the ASHA Health Care Economics Committee. The new codes are:
- 92626 for the first hour of evaluation of auditory rehabilitation status;
- 92627 for each additional 15 minutes of auditory rehabilitation evaluation status;
- 92630 auditory rehabilitation for a patient with pre-lingual hearing loss; and
- 92633 auditory rehabilitation for a patient with post-lingual hearing loss.
ASHA believes that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has undervalued the auditory rehabilitation status evaluation code for 2006 and is seeking revision of the relative value unit (RVU) to have the fee for the first hour's time established appropriately. ASHA maintains that CMS has mistakenly set the value (0.55 for practice expense RVU) so that each additional 15 minute unit is worth the same relative value as the first hour.
CMS does not currently recognize the auditory rehabilitation codes because Medicare limits audiology to diagnostic services only. Speech-language pathologists providing auditory rehabilitation are instructed to use 92507; Treatment of speech, language, voice, communication, and/or auditory processing. For more information, please contact Mark Kander, ASHA's Director of Health Care Analysis, via e-mail at mkander@asha.org or by phone at 800-498-2071, ext. 4139.
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