Congress passed and the President signed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020 (HR1865), which funded the U.S. Government through the end of the fiscal year in 2020 and included a large number of other bills, including the Laboratory Access for Beneficiaries (LAB) Act.
ASCLS is part of a coalition that was working to pass this legislation. Passage of the LAB Act paves the way for additional reforms to the 2014 Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA) by delaying the upcoming data reporting period by one year and commissioning a study on how to improve data collection and rate setting to better reflect Congress' original intent of a market-based fee schedule for clinical laboratory services. In response, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has officially announced the delay for Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule reporting that was to begin January 1, 2020 on actual data from 2019. According to CMS or Clinical Diagnostic Laboratory Tests (CDLTs) that are not Advanced Diagnostic Laboratory Tests (ADLTs), the data reporting is delayed by one year. CDLT data that was supposed to be reported between January 1, 2020 and March 31, 2020, will be scheduled to report between January 1, 2021, and March 31, 2021. Labs will report data from the original data collection period of January 1, 2019 through June 30, 2019. Unfortunately, the statutory cuts to individual test fees will continue, but will be based on older, and presumably, higher baseline rates. For 2020, the rates for CDLTs that are not ADLTs or new CLDTs may not be reduced by more than 10% of the rates for 2019. The current law will allow a 15 percent reduction cap for each of 2021, 2022, and 2023. Here is the current statutory schedule: CDLT Rates Based on Reporting Period Reduction Cap 2020 January 1, 2017 – May 30, 2017 10% 2021 January 1, 2017 – May 30, 2017 15% 2022 January 1, 2021 – March 31, 2021 15% 2023 January 1, 2021 – March 31, 2021 15% We expect to brief attendees to the Laboratory Legislative Symposium in March with next steps the coalition will be advocating. Please let me know if you have any questions, Jim ------------------------------ Jim Flanigan, CAE Executive Vice President American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science (ASCLS) 1861 International Drive, #200 McLean, VA 22102 o: 571-748-3746 | m: 708-359-5721 jimf@ascls.org | @jimflanigancae
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AUTHORWelcome to the TACLS blog. If you would like to submit materials for the blog please email contact_us@tacls.org. Archives
July 2021
Categories |