ACR Responds to Medicare's Proposed Changes to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published the 2006 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MFS) in the Federal Register on Monday, August 8. The ACR is analyzing the proposed rule's impacts and will comment to CMS by September 30, 2005.
In the rule, CMS proposes to reduce the technical component payment for multiple imaging services performed on contiguous body parts. Eleven families (ie, ultrasound, CT, CTA, MRI, and MRA) will be subjected to the proposed payment reductions. Accordingly, when multiple procedures within the same family are performed in the same session, the highest value procedure is paid at 100% and any additional procedure is paid at 50%. This proposed reduction mirrors the policy proposed under the Medicare hospital outpatient prospective payment system.
The proposed reduction is based on the assumption that there are economies of scale in the technical component when procedures in the same family are performed in the same session. The ACR does not agree with these assumptions and will provide extensive comments to CMS addressing its concerns.
