2021 CMS Physician Fee Schedule Changes – NEW UPDATES MAY IMPACT YOUR PRACTICE’S BOTTOMLINE

BACKGROUND

On December 27, 2020, the President signed the second Covid Relief package which includes an additional $3 Billion granted to The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS – Medicare). The additional funds are provided to lessen the effect of the highly contended cuts included within Medicare’s 2021 Provider Fee Schedule that had already been published in final form in early December.

The new funds have required CMS to recalibrate their Physician Fee Schedule calculations. In turn, this ultimately changes the CMS fees that we included in our analysis in mid-December and spoke about on our training webinars to various societies and large group practices.

WHAT CHANGED

To date, there is still not enough information from the government as to how this last-minute change will affect the individual fees by CPT code but it does appear that the CMS fee schedule will increase by 3.75% in total overall. Based on what has been published so far, surgical codes will be increased from the prior published 2021 rates and the cognitive codes, the physician visit codes, will be decreased slightly compared to the rates that had already been published in early December. We do not have final numbers so we are basing our assessment of the changes on what we know so far.  

HOW KATZABOSCH CAN HELP

We are watching this development by the hour and will send out new information as soon as we have a comprehensive, reliable list of 2021 CMS fees. Once the final CMS fee schedule is published our team will be available to assist your practice with a projection of what this change might do to your 2021 practice revenue.

For additional information on this matter, you can review the memo from the Surgical Care Coalition (SCC). The SCC is a lobbying group formed by 12 surgical specialty societies, who published this information before the President signed the final version. To view the memo, click here.