As reported by the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) Effective January 1, 2022, physical and occupational therapists can again furnish and be paid under Medicare Part B for both manual therapy and compression therapy furnished on the same day.
Briefly, as updated in the
most recent Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) National Correct Coding Initiative (NCCI) edits, providers can now use CPT codes 29581-29584 (multi-layer compression systems) on the same date as code 97140 (manual therapy) — a combination that often makes clinical sense, but was not permitted from 2018 through 2021.
While the combination is again allowed per date of service, providers will still be required to append an appropriate code modifier (59, XE, XS, XP, or XU) to identify the two services as being furnished separately to bypass the NCCI edits and receive full payment. APTA offers a simple
decision tree to help determine the appropriate code modifier to use.