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Health Care Procedure Coding System




The Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) was established in 1978 to provide a standardized coding system for describing the specific items and services provided in the delivery of health care. Such coding is necessary for Medicare , Medicaid , and other health insurance programs to ensure that insurance claims are processed in an orderly and consistent manner. Initially, use of the codes was voluntary, but with the implementation of the Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) use of the HCPCS for transactions involving health care information became mandatory.http://www.cms.hhs.gov/MedHCPCSGenInfo/Downloads/HCPCSReform.pdf at page 1

HCPCS includes two levels of codes:


The acronym ''HCPCS'' originally stood for ''HCFA Common Procedure Coding System'', as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) was previously (before 2001) known as the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA).


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