What can psychologists do to increase the likelihood that reimbursement rates eventually will increase?
It is extremely important that psychologists use the health and behavior codes when appropriate and participate in related code surveys. There are two main reasons. First, the survey process involves health professionals comparing codes for the specified service(s) to other services for which they bill. Psychologists’ services generally are valued more highly than the services provided by other health care professionals who also use the health and behavior codes. Therefore, when surveyed, psychologists will make their comparisons to CPT codes that generally carry higher reimbursement values. Since other health professionals being surveyed will compare the codes to services with lower reimbursement values, their final recommendations for revised values for the health and behavior codes likely will be lower than those of psychologists. In addition, the health professional association whose members bill particular codes most often generally have the lead role on any projects involving the
