2006 proposed fee schedule - American Society of Clinical Oncology

covering claims made, rather than services provided during
the policy term). We collected premium data from all 50
States, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Data were
collected from commercial and physician-owned insurers and
from joint underwriting associations (JUAs). The premium
data collected represented at least 50 percent of total
physician malpractice premiums paid in each State. For a
more detailed description of the methodology utilized in the
development of resource based malpractice RVUs, refer to the
November 15, 2004 final rule.
1. Five Percent Specialty Threshold
As discussed in the November 15, 2004 final rule, we
are concerned that the malpractice RVUs could be
inappropriately inflated or deflated due to aberrant data
based upon incorrectly reported specialty classifications.
Therefore, we examined the impact of establishing a minimum
percentage threshold for any procedure performed by any
specialty before the risk factor of that specialty is
included in the malpractice RVU calculation of a particular
code.
We conducted an analysis excluding data for any
specialty that performs less than 5 percent of a particular
service or procedure from the malpractice RVU calculation
for that service or procedure. The purpose of applying the
minimum threshold was to identify and remove from the data
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