Coronary angioplasty and stenting clinicians

Understanding CMS Data

CMS's "Coronary angioplasty and stenting" category combines specific billing codes for treating the arteries of the heart to calculate the number of times each clinician billed Medicare for "Coronary angioplasty and stenting." These include balloon angioplasty, stent placement, plaque removal, and related catheter treatments, which patients often call heart stents or coronary stents. CMS names the category for the group of procedures it covers, not for what each one involved: a procedure counts whether or not it included a stent. CMS reports only procedures that clinicians billed to Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage. Therefore, CMS's procedure volume data does not include procedures that clinicians may have performed on patients who have other health care coverage (e.g., commercial insurance, self-pay, or the VA). Billing variation and coding errors can also affect CMS's data. Therefore, the number of procedures that CMS reports for a clinician may be higher or lower than the actual number of coronary angioplasty and stenting procedures a clinician performed during the reporting period. Lastly, only clinicians with a primary specialty of interventional cardiology, cardiology and its subspecialties, cardiac or thoracic surgery, or internal medicine (as reported to Medicare) are presented.

Source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (August 18, 2026 release).