AMA 2023 E/M Coding Changes

The American Medical Association (AMA) has released changes to the CPT Evaluation and Management (E/M) codes and guidelines, set to go into effect Jan. 1, 2023. These changes build on the revisions to office/outpatient E/M codes in 2021 that emphasized medical decision-making and sought to reduce documentation burden. The AMA hosted a webinar reviewing these changes. 2023 changes behavioral health organizations should implement include:

• Updates to the Medical Decision-Making Table
• History and exam are no longer used to select the level/code, but are required components of the service
• Deletion of direct patient contact prolonged service codes (99354-99357). These services will now be reported through the codes created in 2021, office prolonged service code (99417) or the code created by CMS (G2212 – for Medicare or Medicaid).
  • 99417 may not be used with psychotherapy services. This means there will no longer be a prolonged services code that can be used with 90837 starting in January 2023.