The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the calendar year (CY) 2023 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) Final Rule on November 1, 2022. The final rule continues a recent trend of negative conversion factor (-4.47%) updates, reflecting a statutory 0% payment update, the expiration of a temporary 3% positive adjustment authorized by Congress for CY 2022, and a statutorily required budget neutrality adjustment for other finalized policy changes. The latter include the reevaluation of remaining evaluation and management CPT codes and the continuation of the four-year phase-in period for clinical labor pricing updates.
CMS’s analysis in the rule focuses on the impact to specific physician specialties, and shows that the changes to relative value units (RVUs) alone would range from -3% to 7%. For multi-specialty group practices, however, the impact to a single specialty may not be useful for assessing the final rule’s impact on their practice or budgeting for the coming year. To better assist such practices, this article analyzes the estimated impact of the MPFS CY 2023 final rule on multi-specialty group practices nationwide. Any effort by Congress to address the conversion factor cuts could impact the data included here, but the analysis would still demonstrate the variation based on size and not just specialty alone.
