Several prominent radiology groups are part of a coalition representing 1 million providers asking Congress to permanently address drastic Medicare pay cuts on the docket for next year and beyond.
Professional associations including the American College of Radiology thanked lawmakers for taking action in December to mitigate “devastating” physician reimbursement reductions slated for Jan. 1 of this year. But such actions were only a temporary Band-Aid, they wrote on Monday. ACR, the Society of Nuclear Medicine & Molecular Imaging and others want politicians to stop using budget neutrality to enact “arbitrary reductions to reimbursement unrelated to the cost of providing care.”
They believe the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule’s primary goals should be to encourage broad provider participation and reflect a modern healthcare delivery system that allows clinicians to collaborate.
“Unfortunately, these goals are not reflected given that there are additional scheduled deep cuts to providers who are reimbursed under the MPFS for 2022, 2023 and 2024,” the groups wrote in Feb. 22 letters to the House and Senate. Such cuts, they added, “will negatively impact patient care and diminish practitioners’ small businesses, further slowing our nation’s health and economic recovery from the pandemic. We urge Congress to consider additional policy options in the year ahead to address these shortcomings.”
Legislators injected $3 billion into the 2021 fee schedule to help offset these cuts. Along with the cash infusion, the Consolidated Appropriations Act blocked a new code to further blunt payment reductions by one-third over the next three years. Diagnostic radiologists were slated to see a 10% drop to offset corresponding pay increases for primary care and others who bill for evaluation and management services. The rad reduction, however, fell to about 4% in 2021, with phased-in adjustments to follow.
Others signing Monday’s letter included the Radiology Business Management Association, the American Society of Neuroradiology, the Society of Interventional Radiology, the American College of Radiation Oncology, and the Association for Quality Imaging.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.