Lawmakers Ask CMS to Ditch Medicare’s Proposed Global Surgery Reporting Requirements
Neurosurgeons Applaud Congressional Effort to Discourage Burdensome Plan
Washington, DC—Today, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and Congress of
Neurological Surgeons (CNS) thanked Reps. Larry Bucshon, MD (R-Ind.) and Ami Bera, MD (D-Calif.), and the
other 110 lawmakers who sent a bipartisan letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) urging
the agency to ditch its global surgery data collection proposal. Currently, Medicare pays surgeons a single fee when
they perform complex procedures such as back surgery, brain tumor removal, joint replacement, heart surgery and
other surgical procedures. This single fee covers the costs of the surgery plus all follow-up care within a 10- or 90-
day timeframe. According to section 523 of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA),
Congress required CMS to gather information needed to value surgical services from a “representative sample” of
physicians.
Unfortunately, CMS has disregarded the law, and in the proposed 2017 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, the
agency has included a sweeping mandate that will require surgeons to use an entirely new set of “G-codes” to
document the type, level and number of every pre- and postoperative visit furnished during the global period of
every surgical procedure — rather than a representative sample, as directed by Congress. Under this system,
surgeons would be required to report on each 10-minute increment of services provided.
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