Radiology Coding Alert

Questions remain about whether the reimbursement yo-yo will start again in the fall.

If you've been enjoying a very long summer vacation away from the office, you may have missed the latest in the Medicare fee schedule saga.

For one week in June you faced substantially lower Medicare payments, due to a 21.29 percent cut that hit your Part B claims. Fortunately, the U.S. House of Representatives reversed those cuts on the evening of June 24, with a vote that also gives you a 2.2 percent pay increase through November 30.

Hold Out Hope for Permanent Reform

While your payments are safe until November, physician advocacy organizations across the country and practices, too, have expressed anger and uncertainty about this latest "fix."

"Physicians are forced to make difficult practice changes to keep their practice doors open," said American Medical Association (AMA) President Cecil B. Wilson in a June 17 statement. In another statement, Wilson called the six-month delay "a very temporary reprieve" and added that "delaying the problem is not a solution. It doesn't solve the Medicare mess Congress has created with a long series of short-term Medicare patches over the last decade -- including four to avert the 2010 cut alone."

President Barack Obama urged lawmakers to permanently reform the Medicare payment formula so practices could avoid these issues in the future. "Kicking these cuts down the road just isn't an adequate solution to the problem," the President said in a June 24 statement. "The current system of recurring cuts and temporary fixes was passed into law more than 10 years ago. It's untenable."