CMS Pays for AI Heart Detection on Chest CT

Starting April 2026, every routine chest CT can generate billable cardiovascular risk data - and the cascade revenue potential dwarfs the $15.50 entry-point code.

Every year, more than 75 million CT scans are performed in the United States. Millions of those scans pass directly over the heart. The coronary arteries. The aortic valve. Calcium deposits that predict the next major cardiac event with more precision than the Framingham Risk Score, the pooled cohort equations, or any blood test currently on the market.

For decades, that data sat unused. Radiologists read the lungs. They noted the bones. They flagged incidental masses. But the calcium in the coronary arteries, a finding visible on every non-gated chest CT, was routinely dismissed because there was no billing code to support reporting it.

That changed on April 1, 2026.

CMS created HCPCS code G0680, a dedicated reimbursement pathway for AI-powered analysis of coronary artery calcium (CAC) and aortic valve calcification (AVC) on routine chest CT scans. It is the first time the federal government has formally recognized opportunistic cardiovascular screening from CT imaging as a billable Med…