Individual psychotherapy, 90832, +90833, 90984, +90836, 90837, +90838
There are two sets of psychotherapy codes. One set is the set of codes used by psychologists, social workers, and other licensed mental health professionals to report psychotherapy. (90832, 90834, 90837) These are time-based codes and do not differentiate by the type of psychotherapy or the location of the therapy. The psychotherapy codes follow CPT® rules which state that in order to report the service you need to meet the threshold of over half of the time described in the CPT® code. That is, if the time described in the code is 30 minutes, the clinician must perform that service for at least 16 minutes in order to report the service.
The second set of individual psychotherapy codes set are add-on codes, +90833, +90836, +90838. These are indicated by a plus sign in the chart below, which are added on to an E/M service, when both medication management and psychotherapy are performed on the same calendar date. These are billed by psychiatrists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, and psychiatric social workers.
