Very Brief Blog: Access CMS Final CY2019 Rules for Physician Fee Schedule, Outpatient Fee Schedule, ESRD/DME

On November 1, 2018, CMS released final rules for CY2019 for ESRD & DME, and for the Physician Fee Schedules.   Final Federal Register typeset versions will appear later in November.

• Fact Sheet, Physician Fee Schedule, here.
• Rule (inspection copy), here.
• Fact Sheet, Outpatient & ASC Fee Schedule, here.
• Rule (inspection copy), here.
• Fact Sheet, ESRD/DME, here.
• Rule (inspection copy), here.

For the lab industry, CMS will somewhat liberalize rules for hospital reporting under PAMA including use of hospital outpatient UB1450 claim information (see inspection copy, p. 706ff).  CMS noted it received conflicting comments on this issue.   Genomeweb summarizes the PAMA changes, here. 

A side note, CMS has proposed in July a huge bubble in the price of several key ISH/IHC reagents, but generally walked these back in November (here).

For physicians, CMS will substantially revamp E&M payments (deferred to 2021) and provides new codes for some digital health services.  For a trade journal report, Healthcare Dive, here.  For insights into the degree this helps digital health, MedCityNews, here.

CMS entertained comments on new approaches to DME gapfill pricing for new products that would be less adverse to innovators but drew no conclusions (see inspection copy, p. 440ff).