Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Follow-Up Treatment Session
CPT 90868
Performed as part of a multi-week course of TMS, most often for depression that has not improved on medication.
No national payment amount
Carrier-priced: no national payment amount.
Does Medicare pay separately for CPT 90868 in 2026?
Not at a published national rate. CPT 90868 carries status C (carrier-priced) in the Q3 2026 release. Your Medicare Administrative Contractor prices this code case by case, usually after reviewing documentation. Treat the blank amount as unpriced, not as $0.
How often 90868 is billed
Across Original Medicare in CY2024, 90868 ranked #324 of the 7,879 CPT codes billed to Medicare that year, ranked by patients served or total allowed dollars. Patients who received it in 2024 were billed for it an average of 31.5 times that year — more than once per patient.
2024 Medicare fee-for-service only, national totals — Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and commercial volume are excluded, so real-world use runs higher. This is a calendar-year snapshot from the CMS Physician & Other Practitioners dataset, on a different cycle from the Q3 2026 fee schedule the rates above come from.
Common questions
Why is there no payment amount for 90868?
Its status indicator is C (carrier-priced). Your Medicare Administrative Contractor prices this code case by case, usually after reviewing documentation. The blank is deliberate: the amount is either unknown or paid under another provision, so reading it as $0 would be wrong.
Why would a Medicare claim for 90868 be denied or paid less?
Each item below comes from a CMS indicator on this page — not general billing advice.
- Its status indicator is C (carrier-priced) — Your Medicare Administrative Contractor prices this code case by case, usually after reviewing documentation. See status indicators
- 60 codes can never be billed with 90868 on the same date of service — NCCI denies those pairs even with a modifier. See billing together
- 154 codes pair with 90868 only when modifier 59 (or XE, XS, XP, XU) documents a distinct service — billed together without one, a line of the pair denies. See billing together
- Bilateral surgery: no bilateral adjustment. See billing policy
- Assistant at surgery: never separately payable. See billing policy
- Co-surgeons: not permitted. See billing policy
- Team surgery: not permitted. See billing policy
Payer-specific coverage and documentation rules live outside these files, so a claim that clears every check here can still be denied on other grounds.
When does this rate change?
CMS publishes a fee schedule release every quarter (January, April, July, October), and each is versioned here. See what changed each release, or get an email when a new release moves rates.
Sources: CMS Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Relative Value Files.
Saw this code on your bill?
What is a 90868 visit in patient-friendly terms?
In plain terms: One treatment session of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a non-invasive therapy in which a magnetic coil held against the scalp induces electrical activity in a targeted area of the brain. This code covers the routine sessions that follow the initial visit, where the settings and coil position have already been established. The first session in a course is reported differently because it includes mapping the brain target and finding the patient's stimulation threshold; a separate code covers later sessions where that threshold has to be re-measured. A full course typically runs daily over several weeks, so most sessions in a course fall under this code. Think of someone with depression who has tried several antidepressants without much relief and now comes in most weekdays for a few weeks. They sit in a chair, awake, while a device positioned against the head clicks and taps for a stretch of time, then they drive themselves home. No anesthesia and no sedation are involved, which is what makes it different from electroconvulsive therapy. You'll typically see CPT 90868 on a bill or explanation of benefits (EOB) when a clinician performs or bills for this service.
How this amount is computed
amount = (work RVU × work GPCI + PE RVU × PE GPCI + MP RVU × MP GPCI) × conversion factor. National amounts use GPCI = 1.000. To price an RVU figure of your own, use the RVU-to-dollars converter.
| Component | RVU |
|---|---|
| Work RVU | blank |
| Practice expense RVU (non-facility) | blank |
| Practice expense RVU (facility) | blank |
| Malpractice RVU | blank |
Every rate combines three parts: work (the clinician’s time, skill and effort), practice expense (office overhead — higher when the service is done in a doctor’s own office), and malpractice (the share of liability-insurance cost). A blank means CMS publishes no national number for that part. Read it as unknown, and never as zero.
Billing policy
What 90868's billing-policy indicators mean. These show for every code, priced or not: a restriction like "bilateral not allowed" still matters on a carrier-priced code.
| Policy | Value | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Bilateral surgery | 0 | No bilateral adjustment. The 150% bilateral payment adjustment does not apply to this procedure. |
| Assistant at surgery | 1 | Never separately payable. An assistant at surgery may never be separately paid for this procedure — a statutory restriction. |
| Co-surgeons | 0 | Not permitted. Medicare does not recognize co-surgeons (modifier 62) for this procedure. |
| Team surgery | 0 | Not permitted. Medicare does not recognize a surgical team (modifier 66) for this procedure. |
| Multiple procedures | 0 | No reduction. No payment reduction applies when this procedure is billed with other procedures on the same date — each is treated as unrelated. |
| Professional/technical split | 0 | No PC/TC split. This is a physician service code; the professional/technical split does not apply, and the code is billed as a single service. |
Rate history by release
National non-facility amount for 90868 across quarterly releases.
| Release | Status | Non-facility | Facility |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q3 2026 Jun 30, 2026 – present | C | — | — |
| Q2 2026 Mar 10, 2026 – Jun 29, 2026 | C | — | — |
| Q1 2026 Dec 29, 2025 – Mar 9, 2026 | C | — | — |
| Q4 2025 Sep 11, 2025 – Dec 28, 2025 | C | — | — |
| Q3 2025 Jun 5, 2025 – Sep 10, 2025 | C | — | — |
| Q2 2025 Jun 5, 2025 – Jun 4, 2025 | C | — | — |
| Q1 2025 Dec 23, 2024 – Jun 4, 2025 | C | — | — |
Billing together (NCCI edits)
NCCI Q3 2026Based on CMS's National Correct Coding Initiative (NCCI) — hover a code to see how it's used.
Never billable with 90868 on the same date of service
Showing 3 of 60 — search above to check a specific code.
No match in this list.
Billable with 90868 only with modifier 59, XE, XS, XP, or XU
Showing 3 of 154 — search above to check a specific code.
No match in this list.
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Source & method
This is computed from CMS's Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Q3 2026 release (schedule pfs, effective July 2026). National amounts apply a GPCI of 1.000 and leave sequestration off. The status indicator decides payability, never the RVU values, so a blank RVU stays blank. Releases are immutable: a rate retrieved for a past quarter always reflects that release. Commercial and cash-pay figures anywhere on this page are arithmetic on the Medicare amount, using commonly cited reimbursement ranges. They're illustrative, and no nationwide claims database stands behind them.
Description written from primary sources: CMS Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Relative Value Files. Not derived from AMA CPT descriptor text.
Conversion factor $33.4009 read from the same file, row 11, column 26.
Use the (i) buttons next to each amount above for the exact row, columns, and math.
Cite this rate
This link keeps pointing at the Q3 2026 figures, even after a newer release lands.
CPT 90868 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule rate (Q3 2026). Localis. https://localishealth.com/cpt/90868/2026/C