This bump is timely considering a news release yesterday. Not going to the case for much longer.
Legislation was just introduced to change the process in which compensation for E/M and procedures are valued by the RUC and CMS. It is worth mentioning that the author of this bill is Rep McDermott (D-WA), a psychiatrist and that it is also supported by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), an orthopedic surgeon - bipartisan support and support by specialists. Interesting
http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/...vernment-medicine/20110405ruclegislation.html
"The mechanism for how (Medicare payment) codes are evaluated has contributed to the devaluation of family medicine and primary care through the years," said AAFP President Roland Goertz, M.D., M.B.A., of Waco, Texas. He added that it doesn't seem likely the current RUC process will change this imbalance.
However, H.R. 1256, which was introduced by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., would require CMS to hire independent contractors to identify and analyze misvalued codes for medical services provided to Medicare beneficiaries and to conduct an annual review of these codes. This independent analysis would augment the work of the RUC and could result in greater accuracy and transparency, according to a March 30 press release from McDermott's office.
"Study after study has shown that primary medical care must be the foundation for a high quality, efficient health care system," said Goertz. "If we are to build up our primary care physician workforce to create this foundation, we need a system that recognizes and appropriately rewards the medical expertise and cognitive skills of primary care physicians. This legislation is an important step in that direction."
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has found that although the RUC tends to identify and correct undervalued codes, it does not have the same incentives to find and correct overvalued codes. "(Sub)specialists, especially those who derive the majority of their income through procedural codes, have no incentive to reduce the value of potentially overvalued codes, even though the requirements for physician work in many procedures should be generally reduced as time passes and proficiency increases," according to the text of the bill.
This is also a good read about the RUC process, also released yesterday:
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/04/relative-scale-update-committee-ruc-impact-health-care.html