ASC Fee Schedule Revisions
CMS Payment Rate Update Includes 3% Cost of Living Adjustment
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has updated national ASC payment rates associated with the Medicare list of covered ambulatory surgery procedures. Highlights of the changes, which took effect Oct. 1:

• CMS will update Medicare ambulatory surgery center facility fees by 3 percent for services rendered during federal fiscal year 2003 (Oct. 1, 2002 through Sept 30, 2003). This is the first cost of living adjustment in five years.
• CMS also announced that it would add a new Group 9. The new 9th payment group is being added to give CMS greater flexibility to add higher-cost services to the ASC list when it next updates the list. AAASC expects a massive ASC list update later this year, which could be effective as early as Jan. 1, 2003.
• Revised national wage indexes.

The bigger struggle of getting ambulatory surgery center rates re-based on a more equitable scale still lies ahead, says Michael Romansky, Esq., legal counsel for the AAASC. For more on the current and potential future ASC fee schedule revisions, see Coding