Sleep Medicine – Waking Up

Here’s more evidence that the medical community is waking up to the importance of sleep medicine. The AAPC reports that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid of the Department of Health and Human Services has given physicians who specialize in sleep medicine their own specialty code. CO is that new code, which has an effective date of April 1, 2012, and an implementation date of October 1, 2012. CMS announced this addition recently in Transmittal 2462.

When sleep medicine physicians enroll in Medicare or revalidate their enrollment they can self-designate this new specialty. Specialty codes like CO are used by CMS for “programmatic and claims processing purposes,” according to the AAPC News. The AAPC is dedicated to elevate the standards of medical coding by offering professional education and certification to physician-based medical coders.