Medicare Payment Policy

endnotes
1 For further information, see the Commission’s Payment
Basics: Physician services payment system document,
available at http://www.medpac.gov/documents/MedPAC_
Payment_Basics_12_Physician.pdf.
2 For primary care, payment rates would be frozen at their
current levels. For all other services, there would be
reductions in the fee schedule’s conversion factor in each of
the first three years and then a freeze in the conversion factor
for the subsequent seven years.
3 The study authors refer to “generalist” physicians, but
they include the specialty types included in a primary care
definition, so we use “primary care” here instead.
4 CMS changed the policy on billing for consultations with the
rationale that the relaxation of consultation documentation
requirements over time had brought the effort involved in
consultations to levels comparable to those of visits.
5 When a service is furnished in a facility setting, there is a
payment under a payment system such as the outpatient
prospective payment system—separate from the payment
under the physician fee schedule— to account for facility
costs.
6 The MEI measures the weighted average annual price
change for various inputs used by physicians and other health
professionals to provide services.
Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy | March 2013
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