Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System
The Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS, often pronounced by its acronym as "hick picks") is a set of health care procedure codes based on the American Medical Association's Current Procedural Terminology (CPT).
HCPCS Codes are numbers assigned to every task and service a medical practitioner may provide to a Medicare patient including medical, surgical and diagnostic services. Since everyone uses the same codes to mean the same thing, they ensure uniformity. For example, no matter what doctor a Medicare patient visits for an allergy injection (code 95115) that doctor will be paid by Medicare the same amount another doctor in that same geographic region would be.
History
The acronym HCPCS originally stood for HCFA Common Procedure Coding System, as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) was previously (before 2001) known as the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA). The Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) was established in 1978 to provide a standardized coding system for describing the specific items and services provided in the delivery of health care. Such coding is necessary for Medicare, Medicaid, and other health insurance programs to ensure that insurance claims are processed in an orderly and consistent manner. Initially, use of the codes was voluntary, but with the implementation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) use of the HCPCS for transactions involving health care information became mandatory.
Levels of codes
HCPCS includes three levels of codes:
- Level I consists of the American Medical Association's Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) and is numeric.
- Level II codes are alphanumeric and primarily include non-physician services such as ambulance services and prosthetic devices, and represent items and supplies and non-physician services not covered by CPT-4 codes (Level I).
- Level III codes, also called local codes, were developed by state Medicaid agencies, Medicare contractors, and private insurers for use in specific programs and jurisdictions. The use of Level III codes was discontinued on December 31, 2003, in order to adhere to consistent coding standards.
