Med orders should be allowed with or without CPT codes

I agree this should not be a hard stop. This disrupts patient care. Nursing or providers are not responsible for maintaining CPT codes so why does it hard stop on their side? If the program is able to recognize the expired CPT code why can there not be a report or notice when CPT codes are expiring. Often these are published in a single spot or easy to find and often can be in the future. An alert would be nice but not a hard stop.

we were unaware of this issue until it happened to us at the beginning of April as well. There were no clearly defined resources or warnings that these CPT codes were expiring, at least we had no idea. If this is an expectation that we maintain all the CPT code updates for pharmacy, then there should be a report we can run to see which ones might be expiring soon and a resource we can go to get the updated ones. I thought CPT codes updated with certain maintenance patches. I had never had to do this before. It stalled patient care.

I agree. The nurses and providers could not put in a Solu-Medrol order at the beginning of April, because the cpt code expired March 31, 2024. Thankfully, I was here to change the code and put the order in from the Pharmacy side, but after hours, this is a nightmare. I have gotten called back, because an ER doctor (and the nurses) couldn't put in a med because the cpt expired. Most rural hospitals don't have a person that can sit around and update the formulary every single day.

We did not like this update last year either..although we did not have meds impacted - just lots of wound care supplies. You may already be aware but there is a report you can run that will pull all the items with expired CPTs on them so you can correct them prior to having an issue at the time of OE.