Correction Notice: 2010 Medicare Fee Schedule Final Rule

On May 6, 2010, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a correction notice to the 2010 Medicare fee schedule final rule that was published on November 25, 2009. CMS mostly corrected minor typos and errors that were published in the rule. The RVU changes as a result of these corrections are minor. The corrected payment rates are effective January 1, 2010.

Of significance to radiology, CMS did publish practice expense corrections for CT of the heart (75571, 75572, 75573, and 75574) and for myocardial perfusion imaging (78451, 78452, 78453, and 78454) studies. CMS did not apply the correct practice expense values to these codes in the addendum B of the final rule. The ACR, among other specialties, was involved in the valuation of practice expense for these codes.

There were also technical errors in the malpractice RVUs for certain codes, primarily due to assignment of risk factors associated with technical component services and assignment of risk factors to selected codes that were not consistent with the policies published in the final rule.

The conversion factor currently is $36.0846. Unless there is a legislative fix, the conversion factor will be $28.3868 starting June 1, 2010.

The overall impact as a result of the changes in the correction notice did not change much for radiology, radiation oncology, interventional radiology and nuclear medicine. Updated impact changes are underlined in the chart below.

	Impact of Work RVU	Impact of PE RVU Changes**		Impact of MP RVU	Combined Impact
Specialty	Changes	Full	Tran	Changes	Full	Tran
INTERVENTIONAL RADIOLOGY	-1%	-9% (-8%)	-2% (-1%)	0%	-10% (-9%)	-3% (-2%)
NUCLEAR MEDICINE	-5%	-15% (-12%)	-10% (-7%)	-2%	-23% (-20%)	-18% (-15%)
RADIATION ONCOLOGY	0%	-3%	0%	-2%	-5%	-1%
RADIOLOGY	0%	-14% (-10%)	-3% (0%)	-2% (-1%)	-16% (-12%)	-5% (-2%)

Click here for the revised payment rates for the CT of heart and myocardial perfusion imaging studies.

Click here for a copy of the correction notice.