Home 5 Clinical Diagnostics Insider 5 AMA, McKesson to Offer New Product Mapping CPT, Z-Codes in 2014

AMA, McKesson to Offer New Product Mapping CPT, Z-Codes in 2014

by | Feb 21, 2015 | Clinical Diagnostics Insider, Diagnostic Testing and Emerging Technologies, Reimbursement-dtet

The American Medical Association (AMA) and the consulting and revenue management firm McKesson have announced a licensing agreement that will allow the AMA to create a new reference product mapping McKesson’s Z-Codes, identifiers for specific molecular diagnostic tests, to the AMA’s Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code set. The product, which is expected to become commercially available in 2014, is intended to improve identification and tracking of molecular diagnostic tests. While the real-life implications of this agreement for the laboratory and diagnostics industries are not yet fully understood, experts don’t believe the product is likely to impact reimbursement levels or affect the current process of assigning pricing to existing molecular pathology CPT codes. “We believe this product will bring clarity and take some of the confusion out of the market [surrounding molecular diagnostic tests]. This is about specificity of use and we believe this is a good tool to improve the identification and tracking of tests,” Robert Musacchio, Ph.D., AMA’s senior vice president for business products and services, tells DTTR. “We believe this will improve communication among physicians, laboratories, and payers.” Musacchio says that improved description and quantification of molecular diagnostic tests has the potential to better assess the value of […]

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