Healthcare Financial News

As a result of the July 15 enactment of the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008, the mid-year 2008 Medicare physician fee schedule (MPFS) rate reduction of -10.6 percent is retroactively replaced with the fee schedule rates in effect from January through June 2008, which reflected a 0.5 percent update from 2007 rates.

It may take up to 10 business days to implement the new law’s changes. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will post the new physician fee schedule as soon as possible and will continue its rolling 10-day hold and release of claims. Thus some claims may still be paid at the lower rates that were in effect between July 1 and July 15. Contractors will automatically reprocess any claims paid at the lower rates. Read the fact sheet.

CMS on July 16 announced payment of more than $36 million in bonus payments to many of the more than 56,700 health professionals who satisfactorily reported quality information to Medicare under the 2007 Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI).

Physicians, physician group practices, and other PQRI eligible professionals should receive their payments by August 2008. The average incentive amount for individual professionals is more than $600; average incentive payment for a physician group practice is more than $4,700, with the largest payment to a physician group practice totaling more than $205,700. Read the press release.