New health care innovations and technologies are emerging rapidly and the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) 2025 code set will help physicians keep pace with this quickly evolving landscape with the release of its new edition which contains 420 updates for 2025.
Published by the AMA, the CPT code set is often described as the “language of medicine,” and the more than 11,000 CPT codes in use today serve as the standardized terminology for communicating the use of medical, surgical and diagnostic services across health care. These codes are also the foundation for how health care procedures are tracked, reimbursed and studied.
Descriptors attached to the codes are incorporated into medical documents, insurance forms, price sheets and patient portals and serve as important resources for many hospitals, health plans and medical offices.
“The latest updates to the CPT code set reflect advancements in contemporary clinical practice and ensures the code set fulfills its vital role as the trusted universal language of medicine,” said AMA President Bruce A. Scott, MD, a private practice otolaryngologist in Louisville, Kentucky.
The 420 updates contained in the CPT 2025 code set include 270 new codes, 112 deletions and 38 revisions. These changes reflect the expansion into new areas of medicine—as the highest proportion of new codes (37%) involve proprietary laboratory analyses and most of these are related to novel genetic testing.
Category III CPT codes, which are temporary and used for emerging technologies, services and procedures, accounted for 30% of the new codes.
Updates go through rigorous process
Updates to the CPT code set are considered through an open editorial process managed by the CPT Editorial Panel, an independent body convened by the AMA that collects broad input from the health care community and beyond to ensure CPT content reflects the demands of a modern health care system.
The panel consists of 21 volunteer physicians and other qualified health care professionals who are appointed by the AMA Board of Trustees and make independent decisions that are supported by more than 200 advisers who are nominated by specialty societies. Medical specialties are represented on the Panel as are health plans, coders and government agencies. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has an advisory role on the Panel, and advisory seats were recently added for representatives from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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What the updates include
One area that saw changes was remote therapeutic monitoring services, which involve the monitoring of data related to signs, symptoms and functions of a therapeutic response. Code 98975 was updated to include digital therapeutic intervention, while codes 98976–98978 were revised to include device supply for data access or data transmissions to support remote therapeutic monitoring of patients.
Seven new codes were established for services driven by augmented intelligence (AI), often referred to as “artificial intelligence.” The CPT AI Taxonomy was introduced in 2023 and has been implemented in category III CPT codes to classify AI medical services and procedures as assistive, augmentative or autonomous based on the work performed by the AI application on behalf of the physician or other qualified health care professional.
These new codes are for AI augmentative data analysis involved in electrocardiogram measurements (0902T and 0932T), medical chest imagining (0877T–0880T), and image-guided prostate biopsy (0898T).
Updates were also made to CPT’s general surgery section to reflect novel approaches in skin grafts for wound care and recovery (15011–15018) and advancements in surgical techniques for the elimination of tumors within the abdomen (49186–49190).
From AI implementation to EHR adoption and usability, the AMA is making technology work for physicians, ensuring that it is an asset to doctors—not a burden.
Learn more
Get guidance on the 2025 updates by attending the CPT & RBRVS 2025 Annual Symposium in November, held virtually.
Coding books and products are available from the AMA Storefront on Amazon, including the CPT 2025 Professional Edition codebook. CPT data products, including the CPT 2025 Standard Data File, are available via the AMA Intelligent Platform.
