Proposed Medicare physician fee schedule published

CMS published its 2007 physician fee schedule on August 22, after announcing it in June (see earlier post on this subject). 

If the past is prologue, then the much-ballyhooed 5.1% reduction in fees will be overridden or delayed yet again by Congress (probably after the November elections, as noted in an earlier post).

In addition to the fee schedule updates themselves, the usual grab bag of changes to reimbursement and related rules is thrown in for good measure, including revisions to IDTF rules (based on the familiar litany of overutilization of services) and in-office ancillary services rules regarding reassignment (based on the view that certain contractual arrangements exist as a work-around to purchased diagnostic test rules against markups).

For further detail, see Michael Cassidy’s Med Law Blog.