The 3M EAPG System classifies outpatient care into patient groups and categories based by key procedures and primary diagnosis code. It consolidates multiple single procedures into a bundle and packages ancillary services together with the significant procedure, where appropriate.

3M EAPGs are a powerful tool for calculating expected payment under an outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS). They also provide a useful metric for benchmarking, analytics, reporting, case management and care coordination.

The 3M EAPG System can be used more broadly than CMS APC Software. It applies to all ambulatory patients, not just Medicare beneficiaries. It also includes all services, including therapies and drugs, received in a range of settings from hospital outpatient departments and ambulatory surgery centers to free standing clinics and renal dialysis centers. The 3M EAPG System is useful in many different workflows:

• Abstracting and coding to classify outpatient services into patient groups with similar clinical characteristics and expected resource use
• Billing, patient accounting and denials management to calculate accurate costs and reimbursement
• Benchmarking, analytics and reporting as a quality measure and to calculate an outpatient case mix index (also called "service mix index")