American Medical Association, McKesson Team Up On Genetic-Test Codes

The American Medical Association (AMA) and McKesson Corp. struck a licensing agreement that they say will bring order to diagnostic codes in molecular testing, an area that AMA CEO Dr. James Madara says "has grown somewhat dicey." Madara, CEO and executive vice president of the AMA, said the agreement will have a broad impact among physicians, patients, payers and laboratories in "de-convoluting" the field. The agreement calls for grouping and indexing the Z-Code Identifiers in the McKesson Diagnostic Exchange software – used by labs and test manufacturers – to the AMA Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code set used by physicians . . .