Among the many activities in which the Committee on Economics and its members participate is the American Medical Association/Specialty Society Relative Value Update Committee (RUC). In addition to recommending values for new and revised Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) codes for Medicare, the RUC is frequently asked to provide updated recommendations of values for CPT codes that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) believes may be “misvalued.” Since many of the codes were valued some time ago, the valuation may or may not reflect current practice with respect to either physician work or associated practice expenses. Although misvalued codes may be valued either too high or too low, in most cases CMS believes the “correct” value of these services should be lower than the current Relative Value Units (RVUs) assigned to the codes describing those services.
Since 2009, CMS has identified codes it believed were misvalued as...
