Physician fee schedule payments fail to keep up with inflation and threaten patient access to critical treatments, ACS says.
July 16, 2021 / Nathan Eddy
The lack of a pay increase in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ 2022 Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule has prompted the American College of Surgeons to voice the need for Congressional intervention.
The proposed fee schedule maintains cuts to surgical care due to the expiration of a 3.75% payment increase provided by Congress for the 2021 calendar year. Due to budget neutrality, CMS cut the 2022 Medicare conversion factor by 3.75%.
The conversion factor is used to calculate reimbursement in Medicare’s fee-for-service system. For 2022, the conversion factor is $33.58, a decrease of $1.31 from the 2021 rate of $34.89.
The American College of Surgeons argued that the cuts to surgical care contained within the proposed CMS fee schedule pose a threat to patient access and healthcare equity and called on Congress to stop annual reductions in patient care.
