Editor's Note: The following is excerpted from billing columnist Sam Collins' January 2021 article, which will be available in its entirety in the digital edition next week.
Medicare is scheduled to make a significant reduction in Medicare rates in 2021. CMS has proposed finalized changes to increase the reimbursement for the outpatient / office physician evaluation and management (E/M) CPT codes in CY 2021 (as proposed by the AMA), which will result in an approximately 8 percent cut in payment for outpatient acupuncture, chiropractic, PT and OT services, effective 1/1/2021 (despite receiving over 10,000 comments against the proposal).
Thirty-six (36) different specialties face cuts in 2021 (including acupuncturists, PT/OT, ophthalmology, chiropractors, audiology, and clinical social workers) with the increase in payment for the physician E/M codes. However, CMS has not determined the actual cuts to each code as of press time.
All Medicare provider groups have formed a coalition to block these scheduled cuts and there are things that you can do. Several House representatives have introduced the Holding Providers Harmless from Medicare Cuts During COVID-19 Act. This comprehensive bill has wide support in Congress and among Medicare providers. H.R. 8702, through what is known as a "hold harmless" approach, would ensure that payments to Medicare providers, including acupuncture providers, remain at current levels through 2022.
Take a moment today to send a letter to your local congressperson and urge them to co-sponsor this critical legislation. (To find your congressional representatives in the House and Senate, click here.) This rule is not finalized and with the support of acupuncture providers and others, hopefully, it will be blocked. Let's do our part.
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
| Digital Exclusive
One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
| Digital Exclusive