UPDATE: Congress stops Medicare cuts for one year as part of fiscal cliff legislation January 3, 2013 General CMS, fee-for-service, fiscal cliff, HR8, legislation, Medicare physician fee schedule, Medicare SGR 0 This morning (Jan. 3) CMS released instructions to contractors for implementation of the revised fee schedule. In order to allow sufficient time to develop, test, and implement the revised 2013 Medicare physician fee schedule, Medicare contractors have been instructed that they can hold claims with January 2013 dates of service for up to 10 business days. CMS expects these claims to be released into processing no later than January 16, 2013. The claim hold should have minimal impact on physician cash flow because, under current law, clean electronic claims are not paid sooner than 14 calendar days (29 for paper claims) after the date of receipt. Based on prior history of similar fee schedule updates, CMA believes that physicians may expect to see claims paid in approximately 21 days, rather than the usual 14 days. Medicare contractors will be posting the new payment rates on their websites no later than January 23, 2013. Comments are closed.