The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) recently released the 2010 Medicare proposed physician fee schedule along with a related press release and fact sheet. The regulation includes provisions that confirm a 21.5 percent reduction in 2010 Medicare physician payments unless Congress enacts legislation to reverse this cut. The regulation also proposes to “remove physician-administered drugs from the definition of “physician services” for purposes of computing the physician update formula in anticipation of enactment of legislation to provide fundamental reforms to Medicare physician payments,” a move that has been advocated by the Medical Group Management Association (“MGMA”) for a long time.
MGMA analyzed the regulation’s impact on medical group practices and is making its analysis available only to members at mgma.com. The proposed fee schedule includes provisions that would affect physician practices as follows:
- Start implementation of the congressionally-mandated requirement that suppliers of advanced diagnostic imaging services become accredited
- Notably change the practice expense relative value units for many covered services
- Increase the equipment usage assumption for equipment costing greater than $1 million
- Transfer responsibility from the patient to the Medicare program for co-payments for covered outpatient mental health services
- Add a group practice reporting option to both the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative and the E-Prescribing Incentive Program
The member-only analysis can be accessed here: http://www.mgma.com/policy/default.aspx?id=5802.
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