The 2010 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule is out

CMS has released the finalized 2010 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. Here's the MPFS link to the Federal Register. In short, they're eliminating consultation billing. Here's what CMS said:  

"CMS is also finalizing its proposal to stop making payment for consultation codes other than the G codes that are used to bill for telehealth consultations, and to redistribute the resulting savings to increase payments for the existing evaluation and management (E/M) services. CMS will adjust the payment for the surgical global period to reflect the higher value of the office visits furnished during the global period."

Obviously, we'll have more to report once we digest the entire 1,669-page fee schedule. But here are some key Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) changes:

• Add 30 individual PQRI measures and six measures groups on which individual eligible professionals may report. 
• Add an electronic health record (EHR)-based reporting mechanism to promote the adoption and use of EHRs and to provide both eligible professionals and CMS with experience on EHR-based quality reporting. Under the rule, CMS will begin accepting data from qualified EHR products on ten individual PQRI measures. In 2010, CMS will, for the first time, allow providers to count their submission of EHR-based measures toward their eligibility for a PQRI incentive payment. Specifically, the final rule provides that EPs who satisfactorily report data on at least three of the ten EHR-based individual PQRI measures are eligible for an incentive payment. In previous years, EHR-based measure submission has been on a voluntary or "pilot" basis and has not counted towards an EP's eligibility for an incentive payment.
• Add a six-month reporting period, which begins July 1, 2010, for claims-based reporting of individual measures. In prior years, the six-month reporting period was available only for measures group reporting or for registry-based reporting.