50 lawmakers join ‘overwhelming’ opposition against wage update that will gash radiologist pay
Fifty U.S. lawmakers have now joined building opposition against a policy change advocates say will lead to plummeting pay for radiologists and radiation oncologists.
Reps. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., and Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., recently started circulating a “dear colleague” letter in opposition to planned wage increases for clinical labor staffers. Weeks later, the campaign has garnered growing support from dozens of bipartisan representatives in the U.S. House.
Meanwhile, a coalition of medical-related organizations has formed to fight the change. Participants include the American College of Radiology, Society of Interventional Radiology and American College of Radiation Oncology. The United Specialists for Patient Access also has joined the coalition, announcing its involvement in a Sept. 9 update.
“Successive, cumulative cuts to specialists under the [physician fee schedule] are resulting in reimbursement ever more out of touch with actual resource needs as well as increased healthcare consolidation and healthcare costs, greater health inequities, and a healthcare system unable to meet the challenges of an ongoing pandemic,” the 16 groups said in a Sept. 7 letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
CMS first revealed the change as part of its 2022 Medicare fee schedule released in July. The agency is aiming to update wages for clinical labor staffers such as mammography technologists or angiography techs. But these practice expense components are subject to budget neutrality, meaning increased spending in one place requires cuts elsewhere. As such, interventional radiology, radiation oncology and other specialties with high medical supply costs and lower spending on clinical labor positions could face significant reimbursement reductions next year, experts predict.
The services most impacted by this decision are used to treat diseases that disproportionately impact patients of color, advocates warned. Treatments such as uterine fibroid embolization and endovenous radiofrequency ablation face reductions north of 20%. In their own separate letters, both the Society of Interventional Radiology and the American College of Radiation Oncology predicted these wage updates would lead to practice closures in 2022.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.