CMS has released the proposed 2018 Physician Fee Schedule with the agency proposed to accept all of the recommendations from the CAP and AMA Specialty Society’s Relative Value Update. Some of these recommendations reflect increases.
The CMS estimates that changes to the physician work and practice expense work relative value units (RVUs) used to calculate global and technical component (TC) payments, as proposed for the 2018 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule would result in a 1% overall decrease in pathology services. This impact would vary on individual pathologists depending on their case mix.
The CAP will continue to engage with the CMS on the proposed 2018 physician fee schedule and seek clarifications to its published values. The CAP will submit formal comments by the September 11 deadline.