Maternity Billing, January 2027
The six-week visit was built for a billing model that's ending.
Global obstetric codes retire January 1, 2027. Postpartum care moves to visit-by-visit billing — and practices that keep patients engaged across the postpartum year will be positioned for it.
What's Changing
Maternity care, reported the way it's actually delivered.
Global codes are deleted
The AMA CPT Editorial Panel has deleted the global obstetric codes, effective January 1, 2027. Deleted codes are invalid for 2027 dates of service.
Visit-by-visit E/M billing
Maternity care shifts to standard E/M reporting, with postpartum encounters identified by modifier. Care that was bundled becomes individually visible.
Every touchpoint documented
Practically: each postpartum encounter is now individually documented and billed — visit by visit, across office, hospital, and telehealth settings.
The Practice-Level Implication
The constraint becomes engagement — and documentation.
Under the global period, additional postpartum visits were bundled into a single payment. Under visit-by-visit billing, engaged patients who return for needed care represent appropriately compensated visits.
But a visit only happens if the patient stays engaged — and most postpartum disengagement happens quietly, between discharge and week six. The practices whose patients remain connected through the postpartum year are the practices whose care is fully reflected in the record.
The principle is simple: engaged patients, uninterrupted care.
Where January Fits
Engagement and structure — on your patients' side of the visit.
Engagement across the year
January members stay active in their recovery — and patients who stay engaged are more likely to attend the visits their care actually requires.
Structured longitudinal data
Symptom tracking gives providers an organized record of the interval between visits — a structured longitudinal record that supports the history and medical decision making documented at each encounter.
A better-prepared visit
Patients arrive with organized concerns and a fuller picture of their own recovery. Visit time goes further.
To be explicit about boundaries: January does not provide billing services, does not submit claims, and does not advise on coding. Coding and billing remain entirely with your practice. Our role is on the patient's side of the visit: engagement, structure, and preparation. No EMR integration required to start.
The Road to January 2027
CPT deletion finalized. Practices begin assessing postpartum engagement patterns.
Health plans updating contracts, fee schedules, and claims systems ahead of the effective date.
Practice preparation window: fee schedules, payer contracts, visit templates.
Global obstetric CPT codes invalid. Visit-by-visit CPT reporting effective for 2027 dates of service.
Practices building postpartum engagement now enter 2027 ready.
For Health Systems
Between discharge and the six-week visit, systems go dark. January doesn't.
For hospitals and health systems, the 2027 restructure makes the postpartum period measurable — and what's measurable gets managed. Phase-specific claims illuminate readmissions, missed follow-ups, and untreated postpartum conditions in ways the global bundle never did.
January gives your service line a mechanism in the gap: structured outreach after discharge, early surfacing of warning signs, and routing back into your system's own clinicians and facilities — without adding headcount to the unit.