HCPCS G0560: Safety planningMedicare rate & RVUs in Alaska
A clinician develops an individualized suicide safety plan with a patient at risk, including practical coping steps and strategies to reduce access to lethal means.
Medicare pays $60.84 for G0560 in the office in Alaska (Alaska*). Which amount applies depends on the service address.
Medicare allowed amount for participating (non-QP) physicians, before deductible, coinsurance and claim adjustments. Not a patient’s bill or a hospital charge.
On this page 9 sections
What G0560 covers
G0560 covers a clinician’s work with a patient to create or strengthen an individualized plan for reducing suicide risk. The plan may identify warning signs, internal coping strategies, supportive people or places, professional resources, and steps to make the environment safer, including lethal-means safety counseling. Physicians and other qualified health care professionals may provide the intervention in settings such as an emergency department or outpatient behavioral health practice when suicide risk is identified.
Report the code for the safety-planning intervention itself, rather than for screening or risk assessment alone. Documentation should show the patient’s risk-related needs, the individualized strategies discussed, and the plan developed or updated. CMS assigns work, practice-expense, and malpractice values to the service in the physician fee schedule. The supplied CMS rules list no additional payment instructions for this code.
This summary was written with AI assistance from CMS physician fee schedule data and checked against the CMS billing rules shown here. Rates on this page come directly from CMS files.
G0560 in Alaska*
| Payment locality | Office | Facility |
|---|---|---|
| Alaska* | $60.84 | $57.64 |
How the G0560 rate is calculated
Each of G0560’s three RVUs is multiplied by a geographic index (GPCI) for the payment locality, added up, and multiplied by the conversion factor. Drag the indexes or enter a ZIP to see what moves the rate.
How the rate is built · G0560
RVUs × geographic indexes × conversion factor
Work1.09
1.09 RVUs× 1.000 GPCI
Practice expense0.17
0.17 RVUs× 1.000 GPCI
Malpractice0.01
0.01 RVUs× 1.000 GPCI
Adjusted RVUs
1.2700
Conversion factor
$33.4009
Medicare rate
$42.42
Every GPCI starts at 1.000, the national rate. Enter a ZIP or drag a slider.
Payment rules and modifiers for G0560
G0560 has no global surgery period, no multiple-procedure, bilateral or assistant-at-surgery adjustment, and no professional/technical split. What changes the payment is where the service happens: the place of service on the claim decides whether Medicare pays the office or the facility rate.
Place of service · G0560
Which rate does Medicare pay?
The POS code on the claim line (CMS-1500 box 24B).
POS 11 · non-facility rate · national
$42.42
- Non-facility (office)
- $42.42
- Facility
- $39.41
Higher because the practice carries its own overhead.
G0560 compared with similar codes
Compare codes · National
4 codes, side by side
How to choose
- 90839Crisis psychotherapy
- 90839 represents psychotherapy for an acute crisis. G0560 is for developing or updating practical suicide-risk safety strategies, not crisis psychotherapy by itself.
- 90791Psychiatric evaluation
- 90791 is a psychiatric diagnostic evaluation. G0560 represents the safety-planning work; an evaluation alone does not establish that the plan was developed.
- 96127Behavioral screening tool
- 96127 is used for a brief emotional or behavioral assessment with a standardized instrument. G0560 involves collaborative planning to reduce suicide risk, not just screening or scoring.
G0560 billing questions
When should a practice report G0560 instead of a suicide-risk screen?
Report G0560 when the clinician works with the patient to develop or update actionable safety strategies. A screening instrument or risk assessment alone does not document that intervention.
What should the note include?
Document the patient-specific risks addressed and the safety steps developed, such as warning signs, coping actions, support contacts, crisis resources, or means-safety steps.
Is a safety plan the same as crisis psychotherapy?
No. G0560 represents safety planning; crisis psychotherapy involves immediate therapeutic treatment of a crisis and is represented by codes such as 90839 when its requirements are met.
Can G0560 be reported with an emergency department visit?
It may be reported when the clinician also furnishes and documents the safety-planning intervention during an emergency department encounter. The visit evaluation alone is not the safety-planning service.
Does documenting a referral or crisis hotline number support G0560?
A referral or resource listing by itself does not describe an individualized safety-planning intervention. The record should show active work with the patient on risk-reduction strategies.
Where these rates come from
FeeBase calculates base physician payments from CMS work, practice-expense and malpractice RVUs, adjusted by each locality’s geographic indexes and the conversion factor. Services without a published rate are labeled, never given a made-up amount. Amounts are Medicare allowed amounts before claim adjustments: not a patient’s bill or a commercial rate.
CMS RVU26D · effective Oct 1, 2026 through the day before Jan 1, 2027
Show the CMS file lines behind this rate
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