Understanding the value of RVUs in radiology

What exactly are relative value units (RVUs), and how do they affect payment...Read more on AuntMinnie.comRelated Reading: A review of ACR comments on MPFS proposed rule for 2019 How Medicare fee schedule changes will affect radiology How patient consumerism affects today's radiology practice Billing for off-campus hospital outpatient departments First steps toward APM participation for radiologistsComments: 10/30/2018 3:27:40 AMDr.Sardonicus (oh how I despise RVU's) Quote from The initial focus was to determine a relative value, ultimately called a relative value unit, of the service-specific work component to establish quantitative measures for the actual work that physicians do.   Ok, that's the theory....     Quote from The fee schedule used for payment of Medicare services is a product of the RVU values for covered services (consisting of RVU values for physician work, practice expenses, and malpractice insurance cost) multiplied by a conversion factor (CF) that turns those unit values into dollars.   so - start with this number for each study that after years of analysis has been arrived at as a measure of work.  Then adjust for  1)practice expense (how measured?) 2) malpractice cost. 3) arbitrarily arrived at conversion factor. (CMS "yeah, we don't want to pay that much, just decrease the CF") 4) Regional cost of living   Quote from The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) annually revi...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - Category: Radiology Source Type: news