Health Law

Proposed FY 2010 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule: The Rise of Primary Care

By Todd A. Rodriguez

On July 1, 2009 CMS released a display copy of the Proposed FY 2010 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. It is evident from a variety of the proposed policy changes that CMS intends to force primary care into a more prominent role – in some cases at the expense of specialists. In addition, imaging services in the office setting have been targeted for greater regulation and lower reimbursement

Among other things CMS is proposing to stop paying for consultation codes at a higher rate than equivalent evaluation and management (E/M) services. Practitioners would be required to use existing E/M service codes when providing these services instead. Resulting savings would be redistributed to increase payments for the existing E/M services.

CMS is proposing to increase the payment rates for the Initial Preventive Physical Exam (the 'Welcome to Medicare' visit) to be more in line with payment rates for higher complexity services.

Overall, CMS believes these and other policy changes will result in an increase in payments to general practitioners, family physicians, internists, and geriatric specialists by between 6% and 8%.

CMS has also proposed tightening the requirements for suppliers of diagnostic imaging services by:

(1) proposing to reduce payment for services that require the use of expensive diagnostic equipment; and

(2) proposing that suppliers of the technical component of advanced imaging services such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and positron emission tomography (PET) be accredited beginning January 1, 2012. The accreditation requirement would apply to mobile units, physicians' offices, and independent diagnostic testing facilities that create the images, but would not apply to the physician who interprets them.

CMS will accept comments on the proposed rule until August 31, and will respond to all comments in a final rule to be issued by November 1, 2009.

Full post as published by Physician Law on July 02, 2009 (boomark / email).