Medicare Conversion Factors to Increase on July 1, 2015

Medicare payment for services provided on/after July 1, 2015 will increase due to provisions within the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) - the legislation that repealed the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula.  MACRA established scheduled updates to the Medicare conversion factor with the first scheduled update of 0.5 percent to be implemented on July 1, 2015. 

The national unadjusted anesthesia conversion factor will increase from $22.4968 to $22.6093.  A listing of locale-specific anesthesia is available here. The conversion factor used to determine payments for non-anesthesia services via the Resource Based Relative Value System (RBRVS) will increase from $35.7547 to $35.9335

The conversion factors will be updated by 0.5 percent again on January 1, 2016 with further 0.5 percent updates at the beginning of 2017, 2018 and 2019. 

For more information on MACRA, please view the ASA webinar online.