The 3.37% Medicare physician pay cut that took effect Jan. 1 is not the only compensation cut some physicians are facing in 2024, according to a Jan. 11 report from the American Medical Association.
Some physicians are facing additional pay cuts due to the cost-performance category of the merit-based incentive payment system, which could potentially reduce Medicare payments by up to 9%.
The 2022 category accounted for 30% of the final scores Medicare used when deciding the adjustments it would make to physicians' payments in 2024, despite physicians not being able to monitor or improve their score because CMS didn't provide their data until August 2023, which the AMA says may be inaccurate due to problems with the way the cost performance category is measured, the report said.
The AMA sent an initial letter to CMS administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure in October and sent another in December urging the agency to reweight the 2022 cost performance category to 0% percent of MIPS final scores until the problems can be addressed.