The American College of Gastroenterology, American Gastroenterological Association and American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy outlined how the proposed changes to the 2020 Physician Fee Schedule and Outpatient Prospective Payment System will affect gastroenterologists.
The societies both welcomed and chided elements of the proposed rule.
CMS plans to bump up ASC reimbursement rates by 2.7 percent, resulting in increases for 10 gastrointestinal procedures.
CMS also plans to roll back changes which would've collapsed payments for evaluation and management levels two through four. The government is instead aligning its E/M changes to those proposed by the American Medical Association's Current Procedural Terminology Editorial Panel. Those changes reduce the number of coding levels to four for new patient and revise code definitions. The changes also revise elements of the time and medical decision-making process.
The societies welcomed the change, saying, "We worked with the AMA and a coalition of specialty societies in an effort to get CMS to rethink collapsing indent payment for E/M code levels, and subsequently decided to support the AMA’s indent proposed E/M changes as they moved through the CPT and Relative Value indent Scale Update Committee processes."
The societies criticized CMS' potential policy that would require clinicians to inform patients of surprise polectomty-related bills. All three societies have stumped to close loopholes that lead to surprise medical bills, and all three societies oppose the proposed policy.
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