2025 CPT Updates: New Telemedicine E/M codes

The American Medical Association (AMA) has released the update to coding for 2025. The most significant changes are to telemedicine evaluation and management (E/M) services.

In the E/M section, telephone services codes (99441-99443) were deleted and a new family of codes were created for telemedicine services that include synchronous audio-video E/M for new patients (98000-98003) and established patients (98004-98007) and synchronous audio only E/M for new patients (98008-98011) and established patients (90012-90015). A new code, 90016, was introduced for virtual check-in visits.

CMS acknowledges the deletion of audio-only telephone services (99441-99443) for 2025. However, Medicare will not recognize 16 of the 17 telehealth codes (98000-98016) added for 2025; CPT codes 98000-98015 will have an I Invalid status.  Medicare will only pay separately for brief virtual check-in encounter CPT® code 98016 in lieu of HCPCS Level II code G2012, which CMS is deleting due to redundancy. Pre-pandemic geographic and location restrictions for telehealth (before March 1, 2020) are being reinstated. This means that unless a Medicare patient lives or is located in a health professional shortage area, a rural census track, or a county outside of the metropolitian statistical area at the time of service they will not be covered for telehealth services.