Question: 

The E/M session of the CPT® symposium this year was in question-and-answer format. One of the questions was, “Is a chaperone required to use add-on code 99459?”

Answer:

Their answer: no.

Some consultants stated that in order to use code 99459 with an office visit, consult, or certain preventive medicine services, a chaperone was required, and that must be documented. This never made sense to me. In the Final Rule in 2024, it stated that the code was valued with 4 minutes of staff time and a supply kit. The staff time for a pap smear includes tasks outside of chaperoning, including set-up and specimen handling.

At the symposium, the physicians pointed out that 99459 is for additional resources during a pelvic exam and that “While a chaperone is included in the valuation as typical, it is not required.” This is a copyrighted document, but if the AMA includes this in the CPT® Assistant in the future, we’ll add that reference to the CodingIntel article.