Note from Peggy
In a June 30 news release, CMS announced its plan to hold payments for services paid on the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for the first 10 business days in July that include July 2008 dates of service. If Congress does not issue new legislation, then these claims will be processed with the negative 10.6 % update scheduled to take effect July 1, 2008.
As I have written before, the conversion factor, an important component of the physician fee schedule, was slated to be lowered for the past several years. However, each year Congress either kept the conversion factor the same, or, in a surprise move for the first half of 2008, increased the conversion factor.
In addressing his concerns about the Medicare program, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt wrote in his
blog on March 26:
“The bottom line is that the system is not sustainable and has the potential to become an increasingly large (prosperity altering) problem for our country. The Medicare Trust Fund is broke in the first few weeks of 2019. That is almost a year sooner than last year’s forecast. I will confess to frustration over the fact that the repeated warnings and Trustee reports seem to have no impact on Congress. I agree with so many others who have said this is the biggest long term threat to our national prosperity.”
CMS released information via its physician services listserv that outlines their plan for handling claims processing in case legislative action occurs that will alter reimbursement amounts.
