CMS released a revised version of the 2021 Restructured BETOS Classification System (RBCS). This update corrects a data error in the version published on November 30th. Please visit the following website to access the corrected file.
The RBCS taxonomy allows researchers to group healthcare service codes for Medicare Part B services into clinically meaningful categories and subcategories. The RBCS is an update to the Berenson-Eggers Type of Service (BETOS) classification system developed in the 1980s.
This update includes healthcare services over a 5-year period (2015-2019) and moves the time period forward one year by dropping the earliest year (2014) and adding the most recent year of data (2019). The 2021 RBCS accounts $1.1 trillion of Part B spending, which is an increase of $45 billion in total spending captured from 2020. Of this additional spending, nearly $5 billion came from new HCPCS codes.