Medicare turns deaf ear to CPT changes on cerumen removal

Medicare payment policy doesn't always match the American Medical Association's Current Procedural Terminology (CPT).

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) provided another example of that recently in the final rule on the 2014 Medicare physician fee schedule.

For 2014, CPT revised its description of code 69210 to read, “Removal impacted cerumen requiring instrumentation, unilateral.” Previously, the code description read, “Removal impacted cerumen (separate procedure), 1 or both ears.” To account for situations in which the procedure is provided on both ears at the same encounter, CPT 2014 states, “For bilateral procedure, report 69210 with modifier 50.”

Unfortunately, CMS sees things differently. In the new 2014 fee schedule, CMS stated its opinion that the procedure will typically be done on both ears at the same encounter, because “the physiologic processes that create cerumen impaction likely would affect both ears.” CMS did not provide any evidence or citations to support this opinion.

CMS went on to say, “Given this, we will continue to allow only one unit of CPT 69210 to be billed when furnished bilaterally.” Consequently, CMS elected to maintain the 2013 work value of 0.61 for CPT code 69210 when the service is furnished.

The bottom line is that Medicare will pay you the same amount for 69210 whether you do one ear or two, even though the CPT descriptor now says it is for one ear only.

If only CMS could hear how ridiculous that sounds.

– Kent Moore, Senior Strategist for Physician Payment for the American Academy of Family Physicians