 |
2009 Change in Physician Payment Rate Varies by Service
|
Endocrine Insider
Physician payment changes and updates for 2009 are outlined in the 2009 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule, which was released in November. Overall, physicians will see a 1.1 percent increase in reimbursement thanks to the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act (MIPPA) which was passed by Congress in late summer. However, MIPAA's payment increase does not equate to an increase for all physician services. In fact, some physicians, including endocrinologists, may see a decrease in reimbursement for some of their work. This is a result of a change to the formula used to calculate Medicare physician payments. Previously, payments were calculated using a budget neutrality adjuster that was applied to payments at the end of the computation. This year and in subsequent years, the budget neutrality adjuster will be applied to the conversion factor portion of the payment formula. The result, according to Part B News, is that services heavy in work relative value units (such as office visits) will increase by a greater percentage and services that have higher practice expense relative value units (such as certain procedures like fine needle aspiration with imaging guidance) will be more likely to see a smaller increase or even a decrease in reimbursement. 2009 national payment rates for some services frequently provided by endocrinologists are outlined below.
2009 2008 10022 – FNA with Image $130.92 $134.84 78000 – Thyroid, single uptake $69.97 $63.99 78001 – Thyroid, multiple uptakes $88.72 $82.27 88172 – Cytopathology evaluation of FNA $52.66 $51.04 99213 – office/outpatient visit, est. patient $61.31 $59.80 99214 – office/outpatient visit, est. patient $92.33 $89.89 99215 – office/outpatient visit, est. patient $124.80 $121.51
Additional information on 2009 physician payment updates will be available in future issues of Endocrine Insider.
|
Join Us!
| ||
