The American College of Radiology (ACR) has submitted official comments to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regarding the final rule of the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS), the college announced.
ACR's comments address CMS' implementation of a 25% multiple procedure payment reduction rule to the professional component of MR, CT, and US studies in the MPFS.
"Despite our recent meetings with CMS staff and medical officers in an attempt to understand the rationale for determining the magnitude of the professional component multiple procedural reduction rule, the ACR remains extremely concerned about the methodology that CMS used to arrive at the 25% reduction," the college said in its letter to CMS. "While the magnitude of the reduction has been revised downward from the 50% reduction that was originally proposed ... we remain firm in our belief that even a 25% reduction is unfounded."
ACR also commented on CMS finalizing 2011 interim and 2012 proposed physician work and practice expense values and the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS). ACR emphasized what it sees as ongoing inaccuracies in information contained within the practice expense values database, and inconsistencies in how the information contained in the database is used and maintained. It urged CMS to require PQRS measures to be reportable both as a measures group and as individual measures.
