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CMS-1403-FC
supervised in the office of the billing physician or other
supplier. Although the requirement that the supervising
physician be present in the office of the billing physician
or other supplier may be more restrictive than some
Medicare coverage and payments regulations governing
supervision of tests, we believe that our amendment to
§414.50(a)(2)(iii) is necessary in order to minimize the
potential for overutilization and program abuse. We do not
believe that healthcare costs would be inflated if
physicians were required to be present in the office of the
billing physician or other supplier. If the test was not
conducted within the office of the billing physician or
other supplier, and/or the physician supervision did not
occur within the office of the billing physician or other
supplier, the service would still be payable by Medicare.
We recognize that where audiologist services are
performed by an audiologist, no physician supervision is
necessary, and therefore the anti-markup provisions do not
apply (because §414.50 applies to tests performed by a
physician). We note further, however, that the TC of some
audiological tests can be conducted by a technician and
supervised by a physician, in which case, the anti-markup
provisions potentially are applicable to the TCs and PCs of
such tests. Although the commenter stated that there is no
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