On April 23, the AANS, CNS and AANS/CNS Joint Section on Disorders of the Spine and Peripheral Nerves led an effort urging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to ensure access to care for certain spine procedures performed in hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs) and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs). Specifically, the societies recommended that CMS modify its current HOPD and ASC payment policy to better account for procedure combinations involving add-on codes using implanted devices, stating:
We urge CMS to modify its device-intensive policy and complexity adjustment policy for cases where the primary code in a complexity adjustment C code is not device-intensive, but the add-on code has device costs that meet the criteria for device-intensive status… In cases where the combined device costs exceed the 30% device-intensive procedure threshold, the complexity adjustment C code should be granted device-intensive status.
Click here to read the letter signed by nine national spine societies.
