Cardiology Coding Alert

The American College of Cardiology (ACC) took a new approach to battling the huge pay cuts that have hit cardiologists.

The ACC filed a complaint against Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in December, alleging that she unlawfully adopted the 2010 fee schedule payment rate using faulty methodology, according to the ACC's Web site (www.acc.org).

"Many practices, probably 20 percent of our membership, have already sold their practices to hospitals," says Jack Lewin, MD, CEO of the ACC, in a video on the association's Web site. The pay cuts affect not only physicians, Lewin says, but also techs who perform testing and nurses who work with the patients. But the U.S. District Court in Florida denied the ACC's motions. "Basically, the judge refused to hear our case on jurisdictional grounds, finding that statutory language governing the Medicare program precludes judicial review of the relative value units and the methods for determining the RVUs in the Medicare fee schedule," the ACC stated in a Jan. 12 release (www.acc.org/advocacy/advoc_issues/ACCAdvocate01122010.htm).