Current Procedural Terminology (CPT)

Current Procedural Terminology, more commonly known as CPT, refers to a set of medical codes used by physicians, allied health professionals, nonphysician practitioners, hospitals, outpatient facilities, and laboratories to describe the procedures and services they perform.Current Procedural Terminology are numbers assigned to every task and service a medical practitioner may provide to a patient including medical, surgical, and diagnostic services. Since everyone uses the same codes to mean the same thing, they ensure uniformity.

This system of terminology is the most widely accepted medical nomenclature used to report medical procedures and services under public and private health insurance programs. CPT is also used for administrative management purposes such as claims processing and developing guidelines for medical care review.These codes are utilized to communicate with: other physicians, hospitals, and insurers for claims processing. There are three categories of CPT Codes: Category I, Category II, and Category III.

Each CPT code is five characters long, and may be numeric or alphanumeric, depending on which category the CPT code is in.For more than 5 decades, physicians and other health care professionals have relied on CPT to communicate with colleagues, patients, hospitals and insurers about the procedures they have performed. CPT descriptive terms and identifying codes currently serve a wide variety of important functions.CPT codes are published by the American Medical Association (AMA). A CPT code is a five digit numeric code that describes a variety of medical procedures and services under public and private health insurance.