What’s the news: The AMA and SNOMED International are joining for a demonstration project to show how the AMA’s Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) and SNOMED CT can work together to give physicians and other leaders in health care more ability to align resources to population needs in complex clinical areas such as breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.
The AMA’s CPT codes are vital to health care administration and classification in the United States, while SNOMED CT serves as the global standard for clinical terminology. This collaboration aims to improve integration between the CPT and SNOMED CT terminologies by producing tools for physician practices, hospitals, payers and other stakeholders to better organize health care data.
Why it’s important: The AMA-SNOMED International demonstration project will underscore the power of the two terminologies together, providing a clear path from clinical documentation to resource-utilization insights.
The joint initiative’s goal is to give health care stakeholders more chances to explore additional scenarios, capture new insights, and evaluate how the combined terminologies can be used to strengthen care in their health care systems. As part of the initiative, the AMA and SNOMED International will explore creating a demonstration space, or sandbox, where clinical analytics scenarios can be demonstrated and—in the future—run securely.
“The AMA is focused on improving access to data for solutions to the challenges of an aging population that is growing, a rise in chronic conditions and comorbidities, and an increasingly burdened healthcare workforce,” said AMA Executive Vice President and CEO James L. Madara, MD. “The AMA’s collaboration with SNOMED International supports the shift to digitization and will help the health care industry optimize resources and increase efficiencies as it works towards achieving better patient outcomes, improved access and lower costs.”
The CEO of SNOMED CT, Don Sweete, said the collaboration will show how integration of the two code sets can “provide key information to support the efficient and cost-effective management of health care organizations.”
Learn more: The AMA is a committed supporter and participant of the SNOMED CT Expo, which this year will take place virtually Oct. 8–9. At the conference, the AMA’s experts will take part in presenting two sessions. Get an overview of CPT and how codes are approved.
