For those of us that treat Medicare beneficiaries for outpatient physical, occupational and/or speech-language pathology services, we all understand that the Medicare program utilizes what as come to be known as the “8-minute rule” when determining how many time-based units can be billed during an outpatient therapy visit. But what about non-Medicare insurance carriers that do not utilize the “8-minute rule”? How do we determine how much time of a time-based CPT code must be provided in order to bill that CPT code to an insurance carrier that does not follow the Medicare “8-minute rule”? In this article, I will

A question I often receive is what CPT codes does the so called “8-minute rule” apply to? Does it apply to just the 15-minute time-based CPT codes or does it also apply to the 1-hour time-based CPT codes as well as the untimed, supervised modality CPT codes and untimed evaluation CPT codes? The “8-minute rule” applies to all CPT codes