The American Medical Association’s (AMA) to ease access to remote Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Monitoring

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The Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics Alliance Wel­comes Deci­sion by the CPT® Edi­to­r­i­al Pan­el to Clar­i­fy Report­ing of Remote Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py Mon­i­tor­ing Ser­vices (press release):

As the lead­ing inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion on dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic thought lead­er­ship and edu­ca­tion, the Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics Alliance (DTA) wel­comes the Amer­i­can Med­ical Association’s (AMA) Cur­rent Pro­ce­dur­al Ter­mi­nol­o­gy (CPT®) Edi­to­r­i­al Pan­el’s recent deci­sion to clar­i­fy report­ing of remote cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) mon­i­tor­ing ser­vices. The changes to the CPT code set reflect the grow­ing recog­ni­tion that dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics (DTx) are an effec­tive treat­ment for patients with men­tal health con­di­tions and physi­cians should ulti­mate­ly be reim­bursed for their time spent pre­scrib­ing, mon­i­tor­ing, and sup­ply­ing online CBT technologies.

… a num­ber of DTA’s mem­bers are deliv­er­ing online CBT through their inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts, mak­ing evi­dence-based treat­ments more acces­si­ble and improv­ing patient out­comes … These changes will allow providers to ade­quate­ly describe time spent deliv­er­ing these types of inter­ven­tions, as Dr. Tom Megerian, MD, the Chief Med­ical Offi­cer of one of DTA’s mem­ber com­pa­nies, Cog­ni­to Ther­a­peu­tics, recent­ly stat­ed, “As a pre­scriber, I have seen the val­ue dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics pro­vide to patients first­hand, but inte­grat­ing them into patient care was chal­leng­ing with­out a mech­a­nism to report deliv­er­ing these treat­ments. This update to the code set will help to ensure physi­cians are able to pro­vide the ther­a­pies that work best for their patients.”

The AMA Decision:

CPT® Edi­to­r­i­al Sum­ma­ry of Pan­el Actions Sep­tem­ber-Octo­ber 2021 (opens PDF):

Tab # 43: Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py Mon­i­tor­ing – Effec­tive Date Jan­u­ary 2023

  • Accept­ed addi­tion of code 989X6 to report remote ther­a­peu­tic mon­i­tor­ing device sup­ply to mon­i­tor cog­ni­tive behav­ioral therapy;
  • Revi­sion of the Remote Ther­a­peu­tic Mon­i­tor­ing Ser­vices guide­lines and the Remote Ther­a­peu­tic Mon­i­tor­ing Treat­ment Man­age­ment Ser­vices guide­lines to clar­i­fy report­ing of cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py, and;
  • Dele­tion of codes 0X47T, 0X81T (now final 2022 CPT® codes 0702T and 0703T)

News in Context: