# CPT 90834

> Medicare paid $103.28 for CPT 90834 in the office (non-facility) setting and $91.07 in a facility under the Q1 2021 Physician Fee Schedule, effective January 2021. These are the national allowed amounts before the ~2% sequestration cut and before locality (GPCI) adjustment. This is a 9.2% increase from the previous quarter.

## What it is

An individual psychotherapy session of roughly 45 minutes with the patient, the middle of the three timed psychotherapy lengths. It is the most commonly billed outpatient therapy session, and the note should document the time spent and the therapeutic techniques used.

## Selected release

- Release: Q1 2021 (2021 A)
- Effective: January 1 – March 31, 2021
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $103.28
- Facility national allowed amount: $91.07
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 2.24
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 0.63
- Facility practice expense RVU: 0.28
- Malpractice RVU: 0.09
- Conversion factor: 34.8931
- Formula: `(work_rvu × work_gpci + pe_rvu × pe_gpci + mp_rvu × mp_gpci) × conversion_factor`

## Source and citation

- Source: Physician relative value file (Q1 2021)
- CMS file: https://www.cms.gov/files/zip/rvu21a-updated-01052021.zip
- Parsed file: PPRRVU21_JAN.csv, row 15,743
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/90834/2021/A
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/90834/2021/A
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:10:16+00:00