CPT stands for Current Procedural Terminology and is just a common way of coding various medical procedures for billing and insurance purposes. It is easy to Google a code to find out what it means. much harder to know how to code a broken arm or something like that. To complicate that (no one in government believes in KISS) one 'medical condition' can lead to multiple billings - different code for the office visit, the x-ray, the diagnosis of the x-ray, the actual 'procedure' to fix the medical condition, the consulting doctor who took a look also, and on and on and on. Some people (usually working for clinics, hospitals, etc.) make a decent living because they are whizzes at CPT coding. There are courses just to train people to code CPT coding on bills to "maximize" the medical community bill/insurance reimbursement.
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