Category Archives: CPT codes

CPT Code Ownership Controversy

Thanks to John S. Gage for this link. MyHealthScore.com a site that bills itself as ‘Healthcare Quality Information for Consumers’ has an article and active discussion about the American Medical Associations ownership and rigorous defense of that ownership of CPT Codes: ‘…Imagine a restaurant patron sitting down for lunch. The waitress approaches and requires the diner to pay a $10.00 fee to look at the menu before ordering! This reflects the American Medical Association (AMA) policy for charging patients to view the treatment codes and descriptions employed by all the physicians in this country using the MyHealthScore.com (formerly MECQA) web site. Under these conditions, most of us would take our business elsewhere, if there was another choice…’ This also effects open software engineers since costly access to these codes restricts developer participation and introduces the requirement for proprietary intellectual property for the functioning of open software systems.