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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will defer its proposed elimination of the non-physician work pool (NPWP) for at least a year as reported in the final rule for the 2006 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) that was released today, November 3, 2005. CMS had earlier proposed eliminating the NPWP beginning in 2006 that would have resulted in a 21% reduction for audiology services over a 4-year period. The continued use of the NPWP will maintain, or very closely approximate, current total relative value units (RVUs).
ASHA vigorously advocated against CMS’s proposed elimination of the NPWP and will continue to work with both CMS and Congress to promote a more reasonable alternative. ASHA, through the Health Care Economics Committee, has taken its case to CMS and the American Medical Association (AMA) Relative Value Update Committee (RUC) to demonstrate that moving the professions’ activities from the technical component (or practice expense) to the professional component (or physician work) is appropriate, legally possible, and equitable for future valuations of audiology and speech-language pathology procedures.
More in depth analyses of other aspects of the 2006 Medicare fee schedule will be provided in the near term. For more information, please contact Mark Kander via e-mail at mkander@asha.org or by phone at 800-498-2071, ext. 4139.
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