News

CMS Provides Update to 2021 Final Physician Fee Schedule Rule On December 27, 2020, CMS finalized updated payment rates under its Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Rule for the 2021 calendar year (CY). These updates were made to reflect the Omnibus COVID-19 Relief Legislation passed by the U.S. Congress on December 27, 2020. Several items were included in the legislation that reduced the 11% conversion factor to around 4%. As a result, many procedures that would have otherwise had significant decreases in Medicare reimbursement will have either small decreases or small increases. The new physician fee schedule conversion factor for 2021 is $34.89. That is higher than the conversion factor finalized in the rule released in December, but it is 3.3% less than […]

Congress Considers Legislation to Offset Physician Fee Schedule Budget Neutrality Impacts As physicians continue to battle the worsening COVID-19 pandemic, the last thing they should have to worry about is cuts to their Medicare payments. Unfortunately, without Congressional action before January 1, 2021, that nightmare scenario will become reality. Under current law, CMS is required to make budget neutrality adjustments to the Medicare physician payment schedule whenever changes in relative value units (RVUs) generates a payment increase or decrease by $200 million. As a result, significant increases in RVUs for office evaluation and management (E/M) services finalized by CMS this month and scheduled to take effect in 2021 will lead to a wide range of payment increases and decreases based […]

COVID-19 Vaccine Resources Released CMS and the American Medical Association (AMA) have both developed resources to support efforts to communicate about the COVID-19 vaccine. Please see links and information below if you are interested in providing information and updates to patients and staff. During the COVID-19 public health emergency, Medicare will cover and pay for the administration of the vaccine (when furnished consistent with the emergency use authorization). Physicians should review Medicare payment and Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) Level I Common Procedural Terminology (CPT) code structure for specific COVID-19 vaccine information. They should only bill for the vaccine administration codes when submitting claims to Medicare; vaccine product codes should not be included when vaccines are free. CMS Information: CMS COVID-19 […]

CMS Extends MIPS Deadline to February 2021 To further support clinicians during the COVID-19 public health emergency, CMS is extending the 2020 Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) Extreme and Uncontrollable Circumstances Exception application deadline to February 1, 2021. For the 2020 performance year, CMS will be using the Extreme and Uncontrollable Circumstances policy to allow MIPS-eligible clinicians, groups, and virtual groups to submit an application requesting reweighting of one or more MIPS performance categories to 0% due to the current COVID-19 public health emergency. If you have any concerns about the effect of the COVID-19 public health emergency on your performance data, including cost measures, for the 2020 performance period, submit an application now and be sure to cite COVID-19 as the reason […]