The good news. HR 3962 delays the 21% cut in the physician compensation based on the Medicare Physician Fee schedule until November 30, 2010, replacing it with a 2.2% increase to the fee schedule as of June 1, 2010.
Congress has passed, and the President has signed, HR 3962, the “Preservation of Access to Care for Medicare Beneficiaries and Pension Relief Act of 2010”. Preservation of Access to Care….what a nice title. How many more delays and temporary fixes until the so called “permanent fix” is going to be made?
The bad news is, Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs) are being told to delay claims processing until the update to the fee schedule is tested and loaded, so payments for services rendered on or after June 1 will not restart until around July 1.
MACs are supposed to reprocess claims already processed and paid at the lower level, so providers do not have to resubmit claims, but they will have to be on the lookout for additional payments and changes in adjustments. This will also affect payments by secondary payors and patients. Physicians, medical groups and medical practice billing and healthcare consultants are again facing a real mess!
What I continue to tell our physician groups is: “It is more essential than ever before to become an efficient and effective practice operation! Be better than “best practices” benchmarks and standards!”
Comments are closed.