RAMQ Billing Codes in English: A Practical Guide

RAMQ, the Regie de l'assurance maladie du Quebec, publishes its physician billing manuals in French only. For an English-speaking physician or biller, that means the official code for a routine act can be genuinely hard to find, even when you know exactly what you did clinically.

This guide explains how the manuals are organized and how to bridge the language gap.

Why English lookup is hard

The billing manuals describe acts in clinical French. A search for "c-section" returns nothing, because the manual reads "cesarienne avec ou sans sterilisation." The code you need (06912) is there. The word you searched for is not.

That mismatch between how clinicians speak and how the schedule is written is the core problem. It is also why a plain-text search of the PDF so often fails.

How the schedule is structured

RAMQ codes are grouped by act type and specialty, each with a numeric code, an official description, and a fee. Many acts also carry premiums and restrictions, for example an urgency premium for acts performed overnight, or a limit on how often a complete examination can be billed per period.

When you read a code, always check the surrounding notes. The base fee is only part of the picture.

Looking up a code in plain language

Our Quebec cheatsheets list the most-billed RAMQ codes by specialty in plain English, with the official French description beside each one so you can match it back to the source. For anything not on those pages, the Codefinder MD app searches every provincial schedule semantically: type the procedure the way you say it and it returns the official code.

Always confirm the current code, fee, and any premium against the official RAMQ manual before you submit a claim.