If your practice bills for Substance Use Disorder (SUD) treatment services through Minnesota Health Care Programs, the billing changes you may have heard about earlier this summer are here.

As of August 1, the Minnesota Department of Human Services' updates to SUD treatment service definitions and outpatient billing codes are officially in effect. These changes, stemming from the 2025 Minnesota Legislative Session, align SUD treatment services more closely with ASAM standards and introduce new procedure codes and billing units for outpatient services. Time-based outpatient billing can no longer rely on the old H2035 code. Claim formats and revenue codes stayed the same, so this isn't a full systems overhaul, but procedure codes are exactly the kind of detail that causes quiet denials if they weren't updated everywhere they needed to be.

DHS spent the summer holding provider sessions to walk through the details before the switch flipped. If your practice was following along, you're likely in good shape. If this slipped past you, the good news is it's not too late to catch up, it just means paying closer attention to what's happening with your claims right now.

What Should Your Practice Do Now?

If you haven't already confirmed your systems are aligned, this is the time. Start by checking that your billing software and clearinghouse have the new procedure codes loaded and active. Make sure your billing staff and clinicians are on the same page about any documentation changes tied to the new service definitions. Double-check that authorization requirements and clinical documentation line up with the updated guidance. And most importantly, watch your claims submitted since August 1 closely. A denial pattern is much easier to catch and fix in the first few weeks than after it's quietly eaten into a month or two of reimbursement.

This is the kind of update that looks small on paper and turns into a real revenue cycle problem when nobody's tracking it closely. At TNT Healthcare Billing Solutions, this is exactly what we stay on top of for our clients, watching regulatory changes like this one, implementing billing updates ahead of time, and catching issues in claims before they become a pattern. Our job is to make sure changes like this land quietly on your revenue cycle instead of loudly.

For the full details behind these changes, DHS's SUD Reform webpage has the complete breakdown.