CPT 96137: Psychological or Neuropsychological Test Administration and Scoring (Each Additional 30 Minutes)

CPT 96137 is the add-on code for each additional 30 minutes a physician or other qualified health care professional (QHP) spends personally administering and scoring two or more standardized psychological or neuropsychological tests, beyond the first 30 minutes billed under 96136. It cannot be billed alone.

This page provides general educational information about CPT and RTM billing codes. It is not coding advice, a guarantee of reimbursement, or a substitute for your own compliance review. Payer coverage and documentation requirements vary by plan and can change — verify current requirements with CMS, your Medicare Administrative Contractor, and each payer before billing.

What CPT 96137 Covers

CPT 96137 is a time-based add-on code that captures each additional 30-minute block of a physician or QHP's own hands-on time administering and scoring two or more standardized tests, once the first 30 minutes (billed under 96136) has been used up. The work is administration and scoring — actually giving the tests and generating scores by any accepted scoring method — not the separate interpretive and report-writing work captured by the evaluation codes (96132/96133).

Because 96137 is an add-on code, it is reported in conjunction with 96136 and reflects genuinely additional time beyond that first unit, not a restatement of the same 30 minutes.

Who Can Bill CPT 96137

96137 is billable only when the physician or QHP personally performed the additional test administration and scoring time being reported. If a trained technician (psychometrist) performed that additional time instead, the correct add-on code is 96139, not 96137 — using 96137 for technician-performed time is a documentation and coding mismatch, not a billing option.

Eligible billing QHPs generally include psychologists, neuropsychologists, and other qualified health care professionals whose scope of practice covers direct test administration, consistent with each payer's credentialing rules.

Time and Unit Rules

• 96136 covers the first 30 minutes of QHP-administered testing and scoring.
• 96137 covers each additional 30-minute block beyond that first unit.
• Units should reflect actual documented time (start/stop times or total minutes) spent personally administering and scoring tests — administrative tasks unrelated to direct test administration should not be folded into the billed time.
• A commonly cited industry convention holds that a next 30-minute unit generally requires a meaningful additional block of time to be reached, consistent with CPT's general time-reporting conventions. This specific threshold was not confirmed verbatim in a primary CMS or AMA source for this code family and should be verified against current CPT time-rule guidance before being treated as a hard rule in your practice's coding policy.

Documentation Requirements

To support 96137, documentation should clearly show:

• The specific standardized tests administered (two or more, as required by the code family).
• Total time personally spent by the billing QHP on administration and scoring, ideally with start/stop times or total minutes, broken out from any technician-administered or evaluation time billed separately.
• That the additional 30-minute block reported under 96137 is distinct from, and in addition to, the first 30 minutes reported under 96136.
• Medical necessity for the testing, tied to the presenting condition and clinical question being answered.

Common Denial Reasons

• 96137 billed without 96136 on the same claim — 96137 is an add-on code and cannot stand alone.
• Technician-performed time billed under 96137 instead of 96139, when a psychometrist rather than the QHP actually administered the additional block.
• Insufficient time documentation — no clear record showing the additional 30-minute increment was actually used.
• NCCI/bundling conflicts when 96136/96137 are billed the same day as an E/M service without documentation supporting separate, identifiable services (and an appropriate modifier where applicable).
• Same-test double billing across administration pathways — billing both 96136/96137 and 96138/96139 or 96146 for the same test on the same date, rather than for genuinely distinct tests.

Worked Example

A neuropsychologist personally administers and scores a battery of three standardized tests as part of a post-concussion cognitive workup. The first 30 minutes of administration and scoring is billed under 96136. The battery takes an additional 35 minutes of the neuropsychologist's direct time to complete, which is documented separately with its own time record. That additional block is reported using one unit of 96137, appended to the 96136 claim line, with documentation showing the two time segments distinctly rather than as a single undifferentiated total.

Related and Adjacent Codes

• 96136 — first 30 minutes of QHP-administered test administration and scoring (parent code to 96137).
• 96138/96139 — the technician-administered equivalent, for cases where a psychometrist rather than the QHP performs the hands-on testing.
• 96146 — automated/computer-administered testing, billed once per date regardless of time, for the fully automated pathway.
• 96132/96133 — the separate evaluation codes for interpreting results, integrating data, and report writing, distinct from administration and scoring.
• 96116/96121 — the neurobehavioral status exam, a distinct clinical/behavioral status exam rather than standardized psychometric testing.

How Kavera Handles This

Additional 30-minute administration blocks are captured by the same timestamped record as 96136. Kavera does not merge remote self-administered tests into in-office time. Self-Serve practices run this with their own staff. On Managed, Juliet Mott's team runs it and bills it under your credentials. Educational, not coding advice. Verify requirements with CMS, your MAC and each payer.