Policy and Clinician Payment: Do You Know These Changes Affecting Your Pocketbook?

Gordon H. Sun, MD, MS

August 10, 2018

The Increase That Got Even Smaller

CMS reported that payments to physicians will increase by 0.41% compared with rates in 2017.^[9] The increase was intended to be 0.5%, as noted in the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). However, CMS was unable to meet this target because of misvalued reimbursement codes, thus reducing the payment increase by 0.09%. Consequently, the CMS "conversion factor," or the amount by which relative value units for a given service or procedure are multiplied to generate the Medicare reimbursement rate, increased slightly, from 35.8887 in 2017 to 35.9996 in 2018.^[10]

The 'Permanent' Doc Fix

References

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Cite this: Policy and Clinician Payment: Do You Know These Changes Affecting Your Pocketbook? - Medscape - Aug 10, 2018.

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