2006 proposed fee schedule - American Society of Clinical Oncology

The issue of payment locality designation in light of
changing economic and population trends will be of
importance to us for the foreseeable future. We are
interested in other solutions to the problem, and will work
with anyone who presents an idea or makes a suggestion that
will help resolve the problems associated with the
designation and revision of payment localities.
C. Malpractice Relative Value Units (RVUs)
[If you choose to comment on issues in this section, please
include the caption “Malpractice RVUs” at the beginning of
your comments.]
As discussed in the Revisions to Payment Policies Under
the Physician Fee Schedule for Calendar Year 2005 final
rule, published November 15, 2004 (69 FR 66236), we revised
the resource-based malpractice expense RVUs using
specialty-specific malpractice premium data because those
data represent the actual malpractice expense to the
physician and are widely available. Based upon discussions
with the medical community, we concluded that the primary
determinants of malpractice liability costs are physician
specialty, level of surgical involvement, and the
physician’s malpractice history.
Malpractice premium data were collected for the 20
Medicare physician specialties with the largest share of
malpractice RVUs. We collected data based on premiums for a
$1 million/$3 million mature claims-made policy (a policy
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