Joseph Rugg's Health Law Blog

CMS Factsheet:

“On July 08, 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a proposed rule that updates payment policies, payment rates, and quality provisions for services furnished under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) on or after January 1, 2016. This year, CMS is proposing a number of new policies, including several that are a result of recently enacted legislation. The rule also finalizes changes to several of the quality reporting initiatives that are associated with PFS payments, including the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), the Physician Value-Based Payment Modifier (Value Modifier), and the Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program, as well as changes to the Physician Compare website on Medicare.gov.”

The proposed rule includes provisions relating to the following;

• physician quality reporting system
• “Physician Compare”
• EHR incentive program
• Medicare shared savings
• advance care planning
• payment provisions on Part B drugs, misvalued codes, RVU reductions, “incident to” services, physician value-based payment modifier, etc.

Perhaps most significant in the area of healthcare business transactions are the physician self-referral (Stark law) updates:

• expansion of recruitment and retention provisions to NPPs
• updating physician-owned hospital requirements
• reducing burdens of technical noncompliance through more reasonable regulations in a number of areas (based on information learned from self-dsiclosures and the rersults of recent cases)

The complete proposed rule as published in the Federal Register on July 15 can be found here.

Comments will be accepted by CMS on the proposed rule until September 8, 2015.