How old is your oldest CPT book

My, how CPT® has grown

Thank you to everyone who completed our mission critical survey: how old is your oldest CPT® book and how many pages is it?  Page down: a summary chart is below.

First, some of you save everything. I’d love to see your office shelves. There are coders out there who have books from the 80s and the 90s. Wow.

Second, the rate of growth really took off between 2010 and 2020. Medical science adds new procedures and the AMA gives them all a new code. Seriously, the book’s a monster. I should have added a question: how many of you use the book as your primary source and how many use electronic access.  Next time.

As long as I’m on the subject of CPT®, may I just say how difficult it is to use the book version with all of the out of sequence codes.

And, a more serious pet peeve, why can’t the AMA and CMS get on the same page with practitioner terminology? “Other qualified health care professional” and “non-physician practitioner.” And, could the new terminology please have a specific term for “clinicians who have E/M in their scope of practice” that distinguishes physicians, midwives, advance practice nurses and physician assistants from psychologists, social workers, physical therapists, occupational therapists, nutritionists and dieticians. Have I left anyone out? And, could CPT® give us a listing of what professionals they include in “qualified health care professional” and “other qualified nonphysician health care professional?” I’d be so grateful.  And, if you have a CPT® listing, please, forward it along.

And in case you were wondering, the 2023 CPT Professional ed. is 1,284 pages, just a bit longer than 2022.

Survey results

CPT book year	it’s length
1985	450
1988	484
1996	525
1997	539
2006	664
2010	643
2011	792
2012	812
2013	885
2014	940
2015	965
2016	998
2017	1,026
2018	1,038
2019	1,094
2020	1,126
2021	1,196
2022	1,268