In mid-February ASHA submitted recommendations to the American Medical Association’s Medicare Practice Expense Advisory Committee (PEAC) for evaluation of four CPT procedures critically in need of increase in the fee schedule. Each medical specialty submitted similar lists. ASHA’s Health Care Policy and Financing Team developed the list with the assistance of the Coding and Relative Value Working Group and the Health Services Team. The fee schedule applies to Medicare Part B services only. However, many private insurance companies and HMOs adopt these fees.

The codes submitted were, in order of priority, CPT 92507 (speech-language treatment), CPT 92506 (speech-language evaluation), CPT 92526 (swallowing treatment), and CPT 92557 (comprehensive audiometry). The PEAC accepted the first three codes for review. Because there is not sufficient time for formal surveys, ASHA (and other professional associations) will submit time estimates for typical visits, including time expended by nonprofessionals, for each code to be reviewed. The PEAC will submit as many as 200 codes for formal presentation to the Medicare program prior to development of next year’s fee schedule. ASHA will separately submit comments to the Health Care Financing Administration in response to its forthcoming 2000 proposed fee schedule. We did not submit CPT 92525 (dysphagia evaluation) because ofa lack of data regarding the incidence of bedside evaluations without any instrumental assessment. The evaluation code may be redefined in the future.