AAA Releases 2024 Medicare Rate Calculator
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Tag: Public Use File
Revised CY 2023 Ambulance Fee Schedule Public Use Files
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AAA Posts Reformatted 2023 Public Use File
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CMS Posts 2022 Public Use File
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CMS Posts 2019 Public Use File
On November 28, 2018, CMS posted the 2019 Ambulance Fee Schedule Public Use Files. These files contain the amounts that will be allowed by Medicare in calendar year 2019 for the various levels of ambulance service and mileage. These allowables reflect a 2.3% inflation adjustment over the 2018 rates.
The 2019 Ambulance Fee Schedule Public Use File can be downloaded from the CMS website by clicking here.
Unfortunately, CMS has elected in recent years to release its Public Use Files without state and payment locality headings. As a result, in order to look up the rates in your service area, you would need to know the CMS contract number assigned to your state. This is not something the typical ambulance service would necessarily have on hand. For this reason, the AAA. has created a reformatted version of the CMS Medicare Ambulance Fee Schedule, which includes the state and payment locality headings. Members can access this reformatted fee schedule here.
Summary of December 2017 Ambulance Open Door Forum
On December 14, 2017, CMS held its latest Open Door Forum. As usual, it started with a few announcements, as follows:
- Ambulance Inflation Factor – CMS announced that it had published Transmittal 3893 on October 27, 2017, which sets forth the Ambulance Inflation Factor (AIF) for calendar year 2018. In that Transmittal, CMS indicated that the CY 2018 AIF would be 1.1%. This is based on an increase in the CPI-U of 1.6%, and a multi-factor productivity adjustment of 0.5%.
- Expiration of Temporary Adjustments – CMS indicated that the current temporary adjustments for urban (2%), rural (3%) and super rural ground ambulance transports are set to expire on December 31, 2017. CMS also indicated that they were aware of proposed legislation that would extend these adjustments for 2018 and beyond, but that they have yet to be enacted into law.
- CY 2018 Public Use File – CMS indicated that the Public Use File on its website has been updated to include Medicare allowables for 2018. CMS made a point of noting that the 2018 rates do not include the temporary adjustments, as they are set to expire on December 31, 2017.
- Prior Authorization Demonstration Project – CMS indicated that it had decided to extend the Prior Authorization Demonstration Project for schedule, non-emergency ground ambulance transportation of repetitive patients for another year. The extension is limited to the 8 states (DE, MD, NJ, NC, PA, SC, VA, and WV) and the District of Columbia in which the program was in effect in 2017. CMS further indicated that the extension would be effective for dates of service on or after December 5, 2018. As a result, claims for dates of service between December 2 and December 4 would not be subject to prepayment review if a prior authorization was not received; however, ambulance providers in these states would be permitted to request prior authorization for those dates. CMS further indicated that it had developed a “streamlined” process to allow for prior authorization of transports in situations where the patient was approved for transport, but where the duration of the authorization was shortened from the normal 60-day period to account for the program’s scheduled expiration on December 1, 2017. An example would be an authorization that was granted for transports starting on November 1, 2017. The provider was likely given authorization for only a 30-day period. The streamlined process would allow them to submit a request to allow that 30-day authorization to be extended to a fully 60 days. CMS indicated that the streamlined process would not require the submission of medical records to establish medical necessity for the ambulance.
As with previous forums, CMS then fielded questions from the audience. The majority of these questions focused on the prior authorization process. As with previous ODFs, CMS declined to answer most of the questions on the call, instead asking the provider to submit their questions to CMS via email.
CMS did answer the following questions on the call:
- CMS was asked when it anticipated issuing its report on the effectiveness of the Prior Authorization Demonstration Program. CMS responded that it expected to issue that report during the first quarter of 2018.
- CMS was asked when it expected to expand the Prior Authorization Demonstration Program to additional states and/or the nation as a whole. CMS responded that it was still evaluating the effectiveness of the program. Therefore, CMS indicated that no decision on national expansion had been made at this time.
Have questions? Please write to the Werfels at bwerfel@aol.com.
CMS Releases Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment Data for CY 2013
On June 1, 2015, CMS publicly released the “Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment Data: Physician and Other Supplier Public Use File”, which provides information on the services and procedures provided to Medicare beneficiaries by ambulance suppliers, physicians and other healthcare provider groups. The data file is based on calendar year 2013 data. This release follows on last year’s release of payment data for calendar year 2012.
The database lists all individual and organizations providers by National Provider Identifier (NPI), and provides information on utilization, total payments and submitted charges. It can also be searched by Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) code and place of service.
The Public Use File can be obtained by clicking here: http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Medicare-Provider-Charge-Data/Physician-and-Other-Supplier.html. Please note that you will need to download the desired file and then import it into an appropriate database or statistical software program. CMS is indicating that Microsoft Excel is not sufficient for these purposes, and that importing it into Excel may result in an incomplete loading of data.
A number of news organizations have already created searchable databases that will allow you to search the 2012 data by physician/organizational name, provider specialty, city, state, etc. It is expected that these news organizations will be updating their websites to incorporate the 2013 data in the coming weeks. The searchable database created by the Wall Street Journal can be accessed by clicking here: http://projects.wsj.com/medicarebilling/?mod=medicarein.