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CPT 33945: Heart Transplantation with Recipient Cardiectomy
CPT code 33945 denotes surgical heart transplantation with implantation of a donor heart and may include recipient cardiectomy. As a high-acuity, resource-intensive procedure, this code represents a critical component of advanced heart failure care and transplant programs nationwide. Heart transplantation affects hospital resource allocation, transplant program performance metrics, and payer authorization and coverage policies.
Key payers covered in this analysis include Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna Health, United Healthcare, and Medicare. The publication summarizes how payers typically classify and reimburse transplant services, addresses common clinical contexts that generate use of the code (for example, end-stage heart failure and cardiomyopathy), and situates 33945 alongside related donor and backbench preparation codes used in transplant episodes.
Readers will find a concise overview of clinical scope and site-of-service expectations, a mapping to common ICD-10 diagnoses associated with heart transplantation, and connections to adjacent transplant procedure codes used in donor retrieval and backbench preparation. The piece also outlines typical modifiers and specialty taxonomies that appear on claims involving complex surgical transplantation, and provides benchmarking and policy context relevant to hospitals and transplant programs. Data not available in the input.
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Billing Code Overview
CPT code 33945 describes the surgical transplantation of a heart into a recipient. The procedure includes implantation of a donor heart and may involve removal of the recipient's native heart (cardiectomy) as part of the operative sequence.
Service Type: Organ transplant surgery (heart transplant)
Typical Site of Service: Inpatient hospital, operating room, and cardiac surgical intensive care unit for perioperative and postoperative management
National Reimbursement Benchmarks
Nationally, Medicare’s mean rate of $4,533.50 sits notably below BUCA’s average commercial mean of $6,567.30, indicating that commercial arrangements captured by BUCA pay about $2,033.80 more on average than Medicare for CPT 33945. Median values and upper-tail outliers for commercial payers push many commercial averages above Medicare, while BUCA’s mean remains a useful midpoint among commercial plans.
Dispersion measured by the interquartile range (P75−P25) is narrowest for Aetna at $4,576.00 and widest for Cigna at $7,232.10, with Blue Cross Blue Shield showing a broad spread of $3,196.50 and UnitedHealth Group also wide at $5,504.00. These differences highlight that some payers exhibit relatively tight contracting around the middle while others, notably Cigna and UnitedHealth Group, show greater variability in allowed amounts.