Even the most experienced medical coders can have questions—that’s why the AMA maintains a database with more than 4,000 previously asked questions about the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) code set that these professionals can consult.
“If you wonder, ‘Has anybody asked this question before?’ Quite possibly, yes,” said Leslie Prellwitz, the AMA’s director of CPT content management and development.
“You might have seen yours already in there,” she added. “We meticulously curate and continue to add answers to help inform precise medical coding across the spectrum of specialties.”
Prellwitz spoke during an AMA webinar highlighting how coders can build expertise using AMA CPT resources. Free upon registration, the program was the latest installment in the AMA’s CPT webinar series.
The CPT code set provides a uniform language that accurately describes medical, surgical and diagnostic services. It is an accepted medical nomenclature, used across the health care ecosystem, to accurately describe and record the clinical care delivered to patients, regardless of the care delivery or payment model.
AMA resources provide answers
The AMA’s CPT coding resources described in the webinar included:
- CPT 2025 Professional Edition.
- CPT Changes 2025: An Insider’s View.
- The CPT Advanced Coding Pack, which includes CPT Vignettes, CPT Assistant and the CPT Knowledge Base.
“We all love the CPT Professional Edition,” Prellwitz said. Depending on how long someone has been working in CPT coding, they will “either have one or a library of these up on their bookshelf,” she added. “If you think that the code is simply a code and a descriptor, and that's it—well, it's a little more than that and the [CPT] Professional Edition is the official guidebook with rules and guidelines and a number of other key features.”
These include a comprehensive index, anatomical and procedural illustrations and various appendices such as the one describing what has changed from the previous year’s edition.
CPT Changes 2025: An Insider’s View is an annual publication that “talks about the ‘why’ of our changes and what spurred it,” Prellwitz explained.
“It could be new technology, outdated technology, increased volume or the need for additional specificity,” she added. “This is the one place we can figure out ‘how did we get here?’”
The publication includes context and background on the CPT Editorial Panel process and decisions that influenced the changes, Prellwitz said.
Content that informs proper use of CPT codes extends beyond these core CPT codebooks. The AMA’s CPT Advanced Coding Pack is a powerful coding suite of resources that equips medical coders and others with comprehensive contextual information “when you need that extra research boost” to provide that 360-degree answer—not just stating which code, but why that code, how to report it and what the work looks like, Prellwitz explained. CPT Advanced Coding Pack includes CPT Assistant, CPT Vignettes and CPT Knowledge Base.
She described CPT Assistant as “the official source of CPT coding guidance.” If CPT 2025 Professional Edition “tells you what the code is, [CPT Assistant] gives you guidance on how to navigate, how to interpret and how to use that code,” Prellwitz said. “It incorporates our expert guidance from just under 2,000 expert articles.”
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Included with CPT Assistant is content from a companion quarterly periodical, CPT Clinical Examples in Radiology, which Prellwitz described as offering a “narrow but deep focus on radiology excellence.”
CPT Vignettes includes examples of common patient encounters and descriptions of the typical elements and activities included in the work captured by a given CPT code. Each year, some 300 to 400 real-world examples are given, and they are continuously being updated and revised.
And those 4,000 previously asked coding questions? They are answered in CPT Knowledge Base by experts that include the CPT Assistant Editorial Board and the AMA CPT Advisory Committee. This centralized database is updated each month to provide answers to what people want to know.
Coding conundrum
Accurate medical coding of complex or ambiguous clinical scenarios often involves consulting multiple reliable resources to determine the appropriate code or codes to use. One particular code in the CPT 2025 code set that was highlighted during the webinar was 99214, which is used to describe an office visit of 30 to 39 minutes with an established patient.
According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 99214 is the evaluation-and-management (E/M) code that accounted for the highest amount of projected improper payments for fiscal year 2024 stemming from insufficient documentation or incorrect coding.
Charniece J. Martin, the AMA’s senior manager of CPT education, demonstrated how to navigate a coding question—whether to report 99214 for a specific clinical scenario—by consulting CPT 2025 Professional Edition, CPT Knowledge Base and CPT Vignettes.
“Leveraging trusted resources such as the CPT Knowledge Base helps reduce the risk of coding errors and supports consistency across teams, and it ultimately promotes the integrity of… patient documentation,” she said.
Sign up to receive the AMA’s free monthly CPT News email newsletter and subscribe to CPT Assistant Online, which provides information on the latest codes and trends in medicine, clinical scenarios that help demystify codes, information for training staff, appealing insurance denials and validating coding to auditors, and answering day-to-day coding questions.
