Speech-language pathologists and audiologists who participate in medical team conferences for a patient's care will now have a way to code for 30 minute or longer meetings that meet certain criteria. On January 1, 2008, two new Current Procedure Terminology (CPT) codes will go into effect for medical team conference participation by a non-physician qualified health care professional. ASHA worked closely with a number of associations during the development and valuing of the codes, most especially with the American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association. The new codes should be of special interest to those involved in cleft palate teams or other medical team conferences of 30 minutes or more per patient.
A minimum of three qualified health care professionals from different specialties or disciplines who provide direct care to the patient must participate in the reported team conference. Other requirements include performing face-to-face evaluations or treatment independent of the team conference within the previous 60 days of the team conference. For documentation purposes, reporting participants should record their role in the conference, contributed information, and subsequent treatment recommendations. The time for the team conference starts at the beginning of the case review and ends at the conclusion of the review. Record keeping or report generation time is not included. However, the time is not limited to the time that the audiologist or speech-language pathologist is addressing the team or patient/family. The speech-language pathologist or audiologist must be present for the entire team conference and no more than one individual from each profession may report the encounter.
CPT 99366 will be reported for a medical team conference with interdisciplinary team of health care professionals, face-to-face with patient and/or family, 30 minutes or more, participation by non-physician qualified health care professional.
CPT 99368 will be the reported code for a medical team conference with interdisciplinary team of health care professionals, patient and/or family not present, 30 minutes or more; participation by non-physician qualified health care professional.
Physicians will be able to report 99367 for a medical team conference with an interdisciplinary team of health care professionals, patient and/or family not present, 30 minutes or more. Physicians are referred to evaluation and management codes for one comparable to 99366.
For further information or questions about the new team conference codes, please e-mail reimbursement@asha.org.
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