2006 proposed fee schedule - American Society of Clinical Oncology

variety of other changes to our regulations, payments, or
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payment policies to ensure that our payment systems reflect
changes in medical practice and the relative value of
services. We provide information for each of the policy
changes in the relevant sections of this proposed rule. We
are unaware of any relevant Federal rules that duplicate,
overlap or conflict with this proposed rule. The relevant
sections of this proposed rule contain a description of
significant alternatives if applicable.
A. Resource-Based PE RVUs
Table 30 below shows the specialty level impact on payment
of changes to the PE methodology being proposed for CY 2006. The
columns in the table demonstrate the estimated impacts on
payments (relative to estimated 2006 payments, absent any
adjustment for inflation or utilization) during each year of the
transition. For example, the first column displays the impact of
blending 25 percent of the PE RVUs calculated using the
methodology we are proposing with current PE RVUs. The percent
of the RVUs based on the proposed method increase until the
transition is complete in 2009.
Our estimates of changes in physician Medicare revenues for
PFS services compare payment rates for CY 2006 with payment rates
for CY 2005 using CY 2004 Medicare utilization for both years.
In general, updating the utilization data has little or no impact
on total payments to a specialty, but the practice expense values