Function

• The American Medical Association issues CPT codes to describe medical surgical and diagnostic services. CPT is an acronym for Current Procedural Terminology. There are some 7,800 codes and the rules of use are complex, according to the College of Medicine at the University of Florida. The college advises specialist training in clinical billing.
  
  

Training

• According to certified professional coder and an independent coding consultant, Cindy McMahon, Medicare pays physicians a flat fee of $500 per patient for dialysis training as of December 2010. The course should consist of 25 training sessions. Different codes apply to complete and incomplete courses.
  
  

Codes

• A completed course of 25 sessions is billed to the CPT code 90989 (dialysis training, patient, completed course). According to McMahon, box 19 on the HCFA 1500 form is used to show that the training is complete. An incomplete course is billed to code 90993. The number of completed units is entered in the days or units field of the HCFA 1500. Incomplete training is paid at $20 per session.