The Outpatient Ophthalmic Surgery Society is urging surgery center administrators to contact their U.S. senators and ask them to join other lawmakers in demanding higher reimbursements in the wake of Medicare's proposal for a zero-percent change in ASC payment rates for 2011.

"We must change the method CMS uses to determine ASC payment updates or ASCs will continue to see little to no updates in the years to come," says OOSS Washington Counsel Michael A. Romansky, JD, on a website through which ASCs can e-mail their elected officials.

CMS, guided by the Consumer Price Index, has proposed a 1.6% increase in ASC payment rates for next year. But the healthcare reform bill passed earlier this year now requires the application of a productivity adjustment (-1.6% for 2011) to any increases.

Mr. Romansky notes that Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) have distributed a letter in the Senate requesting that CMS use the Hospital Market Basket to set ASC rates (as it does with hospital outpatient departments) rather than the historically lower Consumer Price Index.

Aside from Sens. Wyden and Crapo, 6 other senators have signed on to the letter: Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and David Vitter (R-La.).

David Bernard

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