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The
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finally bowed
to provider pressure and replaced the tired old "G"
codes for positron emission tomography with 11 CPT codes.
Retroactive
to Jan. 30, CMS will recognize PET scan codes 78459, 78491-78492
(heart), 78608-78609 (brain) and 78811-78816 (tumor) instead
of the dozens of HCPCS codes that providers had to bill
previously, according to Transmittal 475, issued Feb. 11.
CPT 2005 deleted tumor PET code 78810 and replaced it with
78811-78816.
The
new transmittal changes the status codes for the CPT codes
to "A" or "C," meaning carrier-priced,
and adds RVUs for some of them. The transmittal changes
all the "G" codes to status code "I".
Non-Medicare payers have been accepting CPT codes for PET
scans for years, and providers have been waiting for CMS
to catch up.
The
transmittal also makes changes to the bilateral status,
global period and RVUs of dozens of other codes.
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