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Fiscal Cliff Legislation Adjusts ESRD Payment Bundle To Help Offset Doc Fix

 
• By Cathy Kelly

In legislation passed by both chambers of Congress Jan. 1, the cost of a one-year reprieve from sharp cuts to Medicare physician payments, scheduled to begin in 2013, would be offset by a reduction in Medicare’s bundled payment for end-stage renal disease. The reduced payment would take into account a drop in the use of erythropoiesis-stimulating agents observed over the last several years.

The eleventh-hour legislative deal reached in Congress on New Year’s Day to avert the so-called fiscal cliff includes a provision to stave off sharp cuts in Medicare payments to physicians for one year, paid for in part by reducing Medicare’s bundled payment for the treatment of end-stage renal disease, including drug therapy, beginning in 2014.

H.R. 8, the American Taxpayer Relief Act, passed the House and Senate Jan.1 and is expected to be signed by the president. The bill primarily addresses one aspect of the fiscal cliff, the individual and payroll tax increases that would have affected virtually everyone beginning this year

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