# CPT 99238

> Medicare paid $73.65 for CPT 99238 in the office (non-facility) setting and $73.65 in a facility under the Q3 2015 Physician Fee Schedule, effective July 2015. These are the national allowed amounts before the ~2% sequestration cut and before locality (GPCI) adjustment. This price has been unchanged since Q1 2015, when it increased 1.3%.

## What it is

The physician work of discharging a patient from the hospital when that day’s discharge activity takes 30 minutes or less — covering the final exam, discharge instructions, medication reconciliation, and paperwork to send the patient home. A separate, higher-paying code applies when the discharge work runs longer than 30 minutes.

## Selected release

- Release: Q3 2015 (2015 C)
- Effective: July 1 – September 30, 2015
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $73.65
- Facility national allowed amount: $73.65
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 1.28
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 0.69
- Facility practice expense RVU: 0.69
- Malpractice RVU: 0.09
- Conversion factor: 35.7547
- Formula: `(work_rvu × work_gpci + pe_rvu × pe_gpci + mp_rvu × mp_gpci) × conversion_factor`

## Source and citation

- Source: Physician relative value file (Q3 2015)
- CMS file: https://www.cms.gov/medicare/medicare-fee-for-service-payment/physicianfeesched/downloads/rvu15c.zip
- Parsed file: PPRRVU15_UP0.V0515.csv, row 15,949
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/99238/2015/A
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/99238/2015/C
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:06:00+00:00