On September 6, 2016, the American Medical Association (AMA) released the 2017 CPT codes used by providers to bill insurance carriers for services rendered, including outpatient physical, occupational and speech therapy services. For physical and occupational therapy, there are significant changes regarding their current evaluation and reevaluation codes. Effective, January 1, 2017, 97001 (Physical therapy evaluation), 97002 (Physical therapy reevaluation), 97003 (Occupational therapy evaluation) and 97004 (Occupational therapy reevaluation) are being deleted and are being replaced with 3 new evaluation CPT codes per discipline and 1 new reevaluation CPT code per discipline. In this article, I will provide the following information: The new evaluation and

On October 1, 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will end the 12 month flexibility period that they implemented on October 1, 2015. In July 2015, CMS announced “For 12 months after ICD-10 implementation, Medicare review contractors will not deny physician or other practitioner claims billed under the Part B physician fee schedule through either automated medical review or complex medical record review based solely on the specificity of the ICD-10 diagnosis code as long as the physician/practitioner used a valid code from the right family.” “Family of codes” is the same as the ICD-10 three-character category.