Medicare Requiring Specific Modifiers on Therapy Services

January 15th, 2018 - Wyn Staheli, Director of Research
Categories:   Modifiers   Medicare   Physical Medicine|Physical Therapy   CPT® Coding  

Medicare's MLN Matters Number: MM10176 was recently revised to identify services subject to their therapy cap. The revision became effective on January 1, 2018 and some providers have begun to receive claim rejections because they are not using the appropriate modifier. The article states the following:

Services furnished under the Outpatient Therapy (OPT) services benefit – including Speech Language Pathology (SLP), Occupational Therapy (OT), and Physical Therapy (PT) – are subject to the financial limitations, known as therapy caps, originally required under Section 4541 of the Balanced Budget Act (1997).

There are two such caps. One cap is for PT and SLP services combined and another cap is for OT services. In order to accrue incurred expenses to the correct therapy cap; the use of one of the three therapy modifiers (GN, GO, or GP) is required on a certain set of Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) codes in order to identify when each OPT service is furnished under an SLP, OT, or PT plan of care, respectively. 

The following table shows modifier requirements:

Modifier GN

Modifier GO

Modifier GP

92521

92522

92523

92524

92597

92607

97165

97166

97168

97161

97162

97163

97164

For the following codes, use the modifier which is most applicable to you: 92507, 92508, 92526, 92608, 92609, 96125, 97012, 97016, 97018, 97022, 97024, 97026, 97028, 97032, 97033, 97034, 97035, 97036, 97039, 97110, 97112, 97113, 97116, 97124, 97139, 97140, 97150, 97530, 97533, 97535, 97537, 97542, 97750, 97755, 97760, 97761, 97762, 97799, G0281, G0283, G0329

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