Outpatient Visit Current Procedural Terminology Code Level Selection Trends in Hand Surgery Following Criteria Changes by the American Medical Association

Introduction: Beginning on January 1, 2021, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) implemented considerable revisions with regard to the outpatient evaluation and management (E/M) criteria dictating the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code level selection. The primary goal of the current study was to determine how the recent E/M coding criteria changes have impacted code level selection by orthopedic hand surgeons in the outpatient setting. Materials and methods: All outpatient visits within the hand and wrist surgery division of a single orthopedic practice were collected during two timeframes: March 1, 2019, to June 30, 2019, and March 1, 2021, to June 30, 2021. Procedure codes and insurance categories were collected for each visit. The primary endpoint analyzed was the visit level of care based on CPT E/M codes. For each timeframe, we determined the number of total visits that were coded at each level and expressed them as a percentage of the total visits for that time period. The insurance plan billed for each visit was recorded and classified as Medicare, Medicaid, Workers' Compensation, or commercial. Results: In 2019, prior to the billing level requirement changes, 7.2% of all visits were billed as level 2, 84.8% of all visits were billed as level 3, and 7.8% of all visits were billed as level 4. In 2021, 1.9% of visits were billed as level 2, 47.3% of visits were billed as level 3, and 50.5% of visits were billed as level 4. Level 1 and 5 visits did not exceed 0.5% in either timeframe. Within each insurance category, the proportion of visit levels of care followed a similar trend of reduced level 2 and 3 visits and increased level 4 visits from 2019 to 2021. Conclusion: We noted a significant trend toward higher code level selection following the recent code level changes, and we anticipate these recent code selection trends to have major financial implications moving forward.