Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

But some specialties will benefit from pay boosts. As if a 21.2 percent payment cut wasn't enough, CMS targets several specialties that will suffer considerably in 2010, according to the new Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule, published early online in the Federal Register. To lessen the impact to the specialties, CMS will transition the RVU changes over a four-year period, and estimates that specialists in the cardiology, nuclear medicine, and audiology fields will absorb the most pain over those four years. For instance, nuclear medicine specialists will see their reimbursement drop by 18 percent in 2010, and by 23 percent over the four-year period. The new nuclear CPT codes are now reflecting a "combined code" for Spect, Wall Motion and Ejection Fraction. "This will no longer be billed with a code set of three codes in 2010," says Terry A. Fletcher, BS, CPC, CPC-Cardio, CPC-E/M, CMSCS, CMC, CCS-P, CCS, a [...]