The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the long-awaited proposed rule on the 2021 Medicare Physician Payment Schedule on August 3. The AUA is actively reviewing the rule, and in the coming days will be engaging committees and groups in the discussions and the preparation of our comments.
There are four top takeaways for the proposed rule, including:
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Specialty Impact: 8 percent increase in reimbursement for urology
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Conversion Factor: $3.83 Conversion factor decrease (from $36.09 in 2020 to $32.26 for 2021)
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Evaluation and Management Coding: Policies slated to go into effect in 2021 remain unchanged, though CMS has revised how it will consider total time for services, adding the pre-, intra-, and post-service times rather than using the RUC times to be consistent with other services.
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Telehealth: CMS is proposing adding a number of codes to the telehealth services list as well as to create another list of temporary codes that could be delivered via telehealth to Medicare beneficiaries.
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In the coming days, the AUA will release a more detailed analysis of the proposed rule, along with conversion tables for urology codes.
View the proposed fee schedule rule fact sheets.
View the full rule.