AMA has a 39-page on coding digital medicine, scenarios for physicians. Tag line: "Master the appropriate use of digital medicine CPT codes effortlessly."
See's the October 10, 2025, AMA announcement regarding several aspects of digital medicine:
Find the ebook's home page here:
Shortcut to the PDF book here:
https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/digital-medicine-clinical-scenarios-coding-handbook.pdf
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AI CORNER
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Here’s a concise blog-ready summary for your readers:
AMA’s New Handbook on Digital Medicine Coding
The American Medical Association has released a 39-page handbook titled Digital Medicine Clinical Scenarios: Coding Handbook (March 2025), offering physicians a practical, example-driven guide to applying CPT® codes for digital health encounters. The document walks readers through 14 real-world scenarios—ranging from video and audio-only telehealth visits to remote monitoring, chronic care management, and interprofessional e-consults—clarifying which codes, modifiers, and place-of-service designations apply in each case.
The handbook is especially valuable because 2025 introduces major new CPT telemedicine codes (98000-98016) that distinguish between synchronous audio-video, audio-only, and brief technology-based services. Notably, CMS has not yet adopted these codes for payment, meaning physicians will need to navigate divergent AMA and Medicare policies while confirming payer-specific guidance.
The guide also includes a taxonomy of digital-medicine services—from clinician-to-patient and clinician-to-clinician interactions to remote physiologic and therapeutic monitoring and algorithmic diagnostics—making it one of the clearest snapshots of how digital care is now represented in CPT.
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AMA home page: Digital Medicine Coding Handbook
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Direct PDF link: Download the 39-page handbook
Would you like me to add a short “why it matters” paragraph—e.g., implications for digital pathology, AI diagnostics, or genomics testing workflows—to make it fit more seamlessly with your blog’s theme?
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AMA’s New Handbook on Digital Medicine Coding
The American Medical Association has released a 39-page handbook titled Digital Medicine Clinical Scenarios: Coding Handbook (March 2025), a practical guide for physicians applying CPT® codes to the rapidly expanding field of digitally enabled care. It walks through 14 detailed scenarios—video and audio telehealth visits, remote monitoring, therapeutic tracking, and interprofessional e-consults—showing which codes, modifiers, and place-of-service designations apply.
This edition matters because 2025 introduces an entirely new CPT series (98000–98016) for synchronous audio-video, audio-only, and brief technology-based encounters. The catch: CMS has not yet adopted these for payment, so physicians must juggle dual frameworks—AMA’s CPT guidance and Medicare’s continuing reliance on older in-person visit codes with modifiers.
For innovators in digital pathology, AI diagnostics, genomics, and remote physiologic testing, the handbook signals how the coding ecosystem is catching up with hybrid care. It clarifies how digital tools—algorithms, connected devices, or asynchronous image review—map into CPT structure. In that sense, it’s not just a coding manual but a policy weather vane: an early look at how AMA and CMS may eventually reconcile definitions of “telehealth,” “monitoring,” and “algorithmic interpretation.”
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Key Takeaways for Innovators
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The CPT framework is finally catching up to the realities of hybrid and data-driven care. The 98000-series codes formally recognize digital encounters as distinct from in-person visits—an important conceptual shift that lays groundwork for AI- and software-mediated care models.
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CMS is lagging—but watching closely. For now, Medicare still requires billing under legacy E/M codes with modifiers, but the AMA’s structure shows what future CMS telehealth adoption may look like once utilization and cost data mature.
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A roadmap for AI and digital diagnostics. The taxonomy in Appendix R explicitly accommodates autonomous and algorithmic diagnostic services (e.g., CPT 92229 for AI retinopathy screening, multianalyte assays with algorithmic analyses). It previews how machine learning, digital pathology, and genomic interpretation tools can be positioned within CPT’s existing logic—turning “AI output” into a billable clinical act.
