When the U. S. Senate adjourned last night at 8:38 PM EDT, it did so without passing emergency legislation to delay a 21.3% cut in the Medicare physician fee schedule.

The bill under consideration last evening, which also included an extension of long-term unemployment benefits, was defeated on primarily on a straight party line vote. Following the vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) attempted to bring a bill to the floor for a vote that addressed only the physician pay cut. This bill would delay the pay cut until the end of 2010. Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) raised an immediate objection to the bill being brought up for debate, and the Senate adjourned until this morning.

A look at the executive schedule of business for the Senate today shows that no legislation is scheduled to be brought up for debate.

Fi-Med will be following this story as it develops throughout the day. This post will be updated immediately upon release of new information regarding a possible fix to this situation.

UPDATE: [2:18 PM EDT, 6/18/2010]: The Senate has passed legislation that delays the 21.3% pay cut for a six-month period. Because this bill is now a new piece of legislation, it must be returned to the House of Representatives for approval. Apparently, the House is unable to take up the legislation until next week. Moments after the bill passed the Senate, CMS issued a statement saying that claims processing will begin today at the lower pay rate. By law, CMS has run out of options with regard to delaying claims processing any further.

One good piece of news comes out of this. When the bill is passed by the House, all claims with dates of service between June1st and November 30th, 2010 will be subject to a 2.2% increase in the fee schedule that has been followed in the first 5 months of this year.

So to recap, this is a 21.3% cut, followed by reprocessing that repays the cut, plus 2.2%.

A curiosity in all of this is that the AMA is stating that after the cut is eliminated, CMS will only automatically reprocess claims when the submitted charges are higher than the reinstated allowed amount. Those claims with charge amounts that are lower than the new rate will require contact with the contractor.  When the cut is reversed, this needs to be watched carefully.

9:08 am, June 18th, 2010 |