# CPT 68761

> Medicare paid $152.28 for CPT 68761 in the office (non-facility) setting and $122.40 in a facility under the Q2 2018 Physician Fee Schedule, effective April 2018. These are the national allowed amounts before the ~2% sequestration cut and before locality (GPCI) adjustment. This price has been unchanged since Q1 2018, when it increased 1.8%.

## What it is

Closure of a tear drainage opening with a small plug. Each eyelid has a pinhole at the inner corner, the punctum, that drains tears away into the nose; setting a silicone or collagen plug into it blocks that drain so the eye's own tears linger on the surface instead of running off. It is done at the slit lamp in a minute or two without anesthetic in most cases, and it is reported for each punctum treated. Separate codes cover permanently sealing the opening with heat or laser rather than a removable plug.

## Selected release

- Release: Q2 2018 (2018 B)
- Effective: April 1 – June 30, 2018
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $152.28
- Facility national allowed amount: $122.40
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 1.41
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 2.73
- Facility practice expense RVU: 1.90
- Malpractice RVU: 0.09
- Conversion factor: 35.9996
- Formula: `(work_rvu × work_gpci + pe_rvu × pe_gpci + mp_rvu × mp_gpci) × conversion_factor`

## Source and citation

- Source: Physician relative value file (Q2 2018)
- CMS file: https://www.cms.gov/medicare/medicare-fee-for-service-payment/physicianfeesched/downloads/rvu18b.zip
- Parsed file: PPRRVU18_APR.csv, row 11,397
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/68761/2018/A
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/68761/2018/B
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:08:19+00:00