AMA creating telemedicine reimbursement codes
The American Medical Association is creating a suite of codes to enable the reimbursement of telemedicine, with a working group dispatched to create the list last week. The codes are utilised by health providers, insurers and Medicare to make clear what services providers have performed. The creation of these codes means more payers and Medicare are likely to cover telemedicine services as it allows them to delineate exactly what services have been performed, currently a variety of "face-to-face" codes are being used to bill for telemedicine services. The working group comprises some 50 members from the physician and telemedicine communities, and will reconvene in November. 

The American Medical Association is playing catch-up to the already explosive growth in telemedicine, according to physicians involved in the AMA's new work group tasked with cranking out billing codes for the technology-enabled encounters.

Telemedicine “is not going to be a replacement” for traditional face-to-face physician-patient encounters, but will be “another avenue and another channel” for reaching patients, said Dr. Frank Dubeck, one of four co-chairpersons of the CPT Telehealth Services Workgroup, whose members met face to face for the first time last week in Philadelphia.

The work group reports to the AMA's CPT Editorial Panel, which creates and curates the Common Procedural Terminology code system used for billing of physician services.

Dubeck is also a member of the executive committee of the AMA's CPT Editorial Board, which oversees the CPT coding system.