Physician payments
This article was originally published in The Gray Sheet
Executive Summary
Public comments are due Aug. 24 on CMS' proposed physician fee schedule for calendar year 2011, 1posted online June 25. The proposal moves to implement various provisions from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including one that sets the assumed equipment utilization rate, used to calculate payments for advanced imaging, to 75%. This will establish a lower per-scan payment than the historical 50% use rate, but a higher payment than would have resulted from CMS' pre-Affordable Care Act plan for a 90% use rate (2"The Gray Sheet" Nov. 2, 2009). The proposal was released the same day that the president signed a bill into law to hold off an across-the-board 21.3% physician payment cut through Nov. 30, replacing it with a 2.2% pay increase