I recently posted the SGR White Paper published jointly by the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee. Earlier this week, both committees endorsed legislation enacting those concepts. The section by section summary of the SGR Repeal and Medicare Beneficiary Access Improvement Act of 2013 is attached. Unfortunately, both the House and … Continue Reading
The House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee have jointly issued a White Paper proposing the repeal of the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate Formula, entitled “SGR Repeal and Medicare Physician Payment Reform”. The SGR white paper acknowledges that the Sustainable Growth Rate formula is “fundamentally broken” and that application of the SGR … Continue Reading
CMS has issued the poroposed Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. Without Congressional intervention, the SGR will mandate a 24.4% decrease. CMS sent its calcuations to the Medare Payment Advisory Commission. http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Medicare-Fee-for-Service-Payment/SustainableGRatesConFact/Downloads/SGR2013-Final-Signed.pdf CMS has also issued a Fact Sheet Summary: http://www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Fact-Sheets/2013-Fact-Sheets-Items/2013-07-08.html?DLPage=1&DLSort=0&DLSortDir=descending… Continue Reading
The Social Security Act requires CMS to provide annual estimates to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) for both the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Conversion Factor (SCF) and the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR). According to the letter just released by Jonathan Blum, Deputy Administrator and Director for CMS, the 2012 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Conversion Factor … Continue Reading
MGMA reported today: Senate passes a 1-year Medicare physician payment patch; House to act next The Senate passed today by unanimous consent legislation preventing a 24.9 percent cut in Medicare physician payments. The Medicare and Medicaid Extenders Act of 2010 (H.R. 4944) extends the current Medicare payment rates through Dec. 31, 2011. This one-year halt of … Continue Reading
Today the Senate passed an amended version of H.R. 4851, the act to extend SGR relief ( Continuing Extension Act of 2010 ) by continuing 2009 rates. Since an earlier but different version has already passed the House, this version must be approved again. The AMA predicts action by the end of the week. Although … Continue Reading
The stalled healthcare reform initiative leaves the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule problem of the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) imposed 21.5% reduction as a stand alone separate issue. The physician fee schedule decrease was postponed for 2 months by an Obama addition to a defense approriation bill, with the expectation that a long term solution would … Continue Reading
