Earlier this year, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) deleted certain Correct Coding Initiative (CCI) edits related to physical, occupational, and speech therapy during the public health emergency. Recently, CMS announced that effective October 1, it will reinstate previously deleted coding edits for code pairs that represent common and appropriate therapy practice (i.e. 97116 and 97530 or 92526 and 97129).
The reinstated edits will require the use of the 59-modifier when these code pairs are provided on the same date of service. For clinicians, data entry within Optima will remain the same. The 59-modifer will automatically be added by Optima when appropriate and viable on the Service Delivery Logs.