CMS Releases Proposed Physician Fee Schedule for CY 2018

AAOA had participated in surveys for the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Relative Value Update Committee (RUC) for services commonly billed by members, including those for percutaneous allergy skin tests and nasal sinus endoscopy. In the proposed Physician Fee Schedule rule for CY 2018, CMS announced its intention to include the RUC–recommended values for services in the rule as many specialty societies had requested. This represents a change in how the agency has recently been treating the recommendations received from the RUC.

With respect to percutaneous allergy testing, CMS proposed maintaining the existing work RVU of 0.01. AAOA urged CMS to finalize this proposal in comments to the agency. The RUC reviewed the family of nasal sinus endoscopy services after the CPT Editorial Panel added five new codes to the family and revised eight codes in the family. For these services, CMS did outline alternate values that were considered for these services before proposing the RUC-recommended values. AAOA urged CMS to finalize the RUC-recommended values which were based on a strong survey and reject the alternative values CMS had considered.

The final PFS rule will be released later this fall, and AAOA will provide an update on the final values for these services.