2023 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Proposed Rule
Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the CY 2023 revisions to payment policies under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) and other changes to the Medicare part B payment policies (CMS-1770-P) proposed rule. In this article, we shared the impact of the 2023 MPFS proposed rule on neurology billing, the key points are as follows:
Impact of 2023 MPFS Proposed Rule on Neurology Billing
- CMS shows the impact of the provisions of the rule to be a zero percent chance for neurosurgery. However, CMS proposes a CY 2023 conversion factor (CF) of 33.0775, which is a 4.42 percent (rounded to 4.5%) reduction relative to the CY 2022 CF of 34.6062, which comes in addition to the pending 4% pay-as-you-go cut that congress postponed last year and the resumption of the 2% annual Medicare payment sequester.
- CMS received a request to designate CPT code 23091 (Allograft, structural, for spine surgery only) as potentially misvalued. CMS has disagreed with the rationale provided by the requester and is proposing not to designate the procedure as misvalued.
- CMS is considering proposals to rebase and revise the Medicare Economic Index (MEI) cost share weights, and the agency is soliciting comments on this issue. The MEI measures the input prices for providing physician services. The agency proposes a new methodology allowing data to reflect better current market conditions for both physician ownership practices and self-employed physicians. It will also enable the MEI to be updated more frequently. The change would not impact the overall MPFS spending but could result in significant changes to payment for particular specialties. CMS is not proposing to use the updated MEI data to set payment rates for CY 2023 but is soliciting comments on future use.