2006 proposed fee schedule - American Society of Clinical Oncology

Effective January 1, 2006, this provision will end and the
proposed 2006 GPCIs for Alaska will be 1.017 for physician
work, 1.103 for PE, and 1.029 for malpractice.
Payment Localities
In the August 15, 2004 PFS rule proposed rule, we
discussed the issue of changes to the GPCI payment
localities (69 FR 47504). In that proposed rule, we noted
that we look for the support of a State medical society as
the impetus for changes to existing payment localities.
Because the GPCIs for each locality are calculated using the
average of the county-specific data from all of the counties
in the locality, removing high-cost counties from a locality
will result in lower GPCIs for the remaining counties.
Therefore, because of this redistributive impact, we have
refrained, in the past, from making changes to payment
localities unless the State medical association provides
evidence that any proposed change has statewide support.
In the November 15, 2004 PFS final rule, we discussed a
“placeholder” proposal submitted to us in comments received
from the California Medical Association (CMA) (69 FR 66263).
The proposal described in CMA's comment would move any
county with a county-specific geographic adjustment factor
(GAF) that is at least 5 percent greater than its locality
GAF to its own individual county payment locality. (The GAF
is the weighted average of the GPCIs for each locality. The
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