As physician practices across the country wait for a COVID-19 vaccine to arrive, the American Medical Association is laying the groundwork to begin delivering these immunizations.
The doc group on Tuesday announced a new set of Current Procedure Terminology codes to report vaccinations for the novel coronavirus. AMA said its CPT Editorial Panel has worked closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to establish unique markers for each of the two COVID vaccines.
AMA said it’s releasing these codes before any drug is available so that practices can prepare their electronic health records ahead of time.
“An effective national immunization program is key to bringing the coronavirus pandemic to an end,” President Susan Bailey, MD, said Nov. 10. “Correlating each coronavirus vaccine with its own unique CPT code provides analytical advantages to help track, allocate and optimize resources as an immunization program ramps up in the United States.”
Meanwhile, the AMA Editorial Panel is also working with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to establish new vaccine administration codes tied to specific products and dosage amounts. Their goal is to clinically distinguish each COVID vaccine to allow for better tracking, reporting and analysis, experts noted.
The announcement comes amid positive news on Pfizer’s clinical trials this week, with officials anticipating that a general vaccination program could begin in the spring. The American College of Radiology was among dozens of organizations in September who called such drugs “a critical tool to help end this pandemic,” while also urging caution in granting approvals. Here are the two new CPT codes:
- 91300: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Coronavirus disease [COVID-19]) vaccine, mRNA-LNP, spike protein, preservative free, 30 mcg/0.3mL dosage, diluent reconstituted, for intramuscular use.
- 91301: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Coronavirus disease [COVID-19]) vaccine, mRNA-LNP, spike protein, preservative free, 100 mcg/0.5mL dosage, for intramuscular use.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.