Does the AMA care about doctors and patients?
Copyright
CPT is a registered trademark of the American Medical Association. The AMA holds copyright which prevents free use and distribution of codes.[3]
Although the CPT system is mandated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and HIPAA, and the data for it appear in the Federal Register, the American Medical Association (AMA) maintains that their copyright of the CPT allows them to charge a license fee to anyone who wishes to associate Relative Value Unit (RVU) values with CPT codes. The AMA receives approximately $70 million annually from these fees, making them reluctant to allow the free distribution of tools and data that might help physicians calculate, record, or submit their fees accurately and fairly.[citation needed]
[edit] Limited CPT Search Offered by the AMA
The AMA offers a personal, non-commercial search of the Current Procedural Terminology, Fourth Edition (“CPT”) manual on its website:
https://catalog.ama-assn.org/Catalog/cpt/cpt_search.jsp
Unfortunately, this tool limits not only the number of codes anyone can look up, but it doesn’t provide helpful information (such as the component values of each code or the ability to use an individual fee multiplier) or provide the results in a manner that can be easily adopted to a spreadsheet for analysis, etc. For providers or patients to fairly assess medical charges, they must pay the AMA a license fee.
So I just graduated from fellowship 5 months ago and now am in the “real world” of medicine, trying to make my way and do a good job. One of the necessary but tedious aspects of practice is billing, or more aptly “coding” your work so that it can get reimbursed by third part insurers. One of the things I -and I know others- have found frustrating is learning how to “code” the various work that I do on a daily basis.
CPT (current procedural codes) are an entity trademarked by the AMA. It is a system of numbers assigned to a myriad of every thinkable reimbursable act a physician might make. The coding book describing the codes literally is the size of a phone book and it is so cumbersome to navigate that it takes full time staff just to aid in performing the process. So I have been searching online for easy ways to look up codes and make sure I am doing the billing appropriately so I don’t get taken away in handcuffs.
I came across the above caption from wikipedia. It succinctly describes how and why the system benefits neither doctors nor patients, but the AMA itself. Personally I think the AMA is pathetic. Any group whose sole function is to obfuscate data, complicate processes in which people’s lives are at stake and deliberately make the delivery of care more inefficient is deserving of neither my respect nor my money. Memo to the AMA, quit sending me the stupid “deals” on life and disability insurance and go away. You couldn’t care less about patients or the doctors that treat them and are an abject failure.
