Ace the 2026 PA & Society Exam – Your Pathway to Physician Assistant Success!

Evaluation and management centers on the clinician’s cognitive work—the history, the physical examination, and especially the medical decision making that leads to diagnosing and planning treatment for a patient’s illness or injury. E/M codes reflect the level of that cognitive effort and the resulting management plan, not the performance of procedures. So the primary focus is forming a diagnosis and a treatment strategy through careful assessment and reasoning, rather than surgical acts, anesthesia, or simply conducting tests. The other tasks—performing surgeries, administering anesthesia, or just carrying out laboratory testing—are separate types of services, while E/M is about the clinical decision-making process that guides care.