2006 proposed fee schedule - American Society of Clinical Oncology

market area. That is, we would continue to classify all
Micropolitan counties as rural.
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To facilitate an understanding of our proposed policies
relating to the revisions to the ESRD facility labor market
areas discussed in this proposed rule, we have provided
addendum F in the Addendum section to this proposed rule.
Addendum F is a crosswalk table that contains a listing of
each SSA State and county location code; state and county
name; existing 1980 MSA based labor market area designation;
and CBSA-based labor market area. Addendum F also contains
the new wage indexes for each urban and rural area.
f. Proposed Revisions to the Labor Component of the
Composite Rate
The current labor-related portions of the
hospital-based and independent composite payment rates (in
other words, the portion adjusted by each facility’s area
wage index) are 36.78 percent and 40.65 percent,
respectively. These labor-related shares have not been
revised since the inception of the ESRD composite payment
system in 1983.
When the composite rates were established in 1983, we
developed the labor-related share of the rate based on 1978
and 1979 cost data collected from 110 ESRD facilities; 40
independent and 70 hospital-based. For other PPSs
administered by us, the labor-related shares are determined