2011 Conversion Factor Will Stand at $33.9764

Recently, President Obama may have locked in a zero percent adjustment to your Medicare Part B payments, however that does not mean your ortho practice should be calculating your fees using last year's rates. As a matter of fact, the 2011 conversion factor is slightly lower this year than what you were collecting last year, according to an 'Emergency update' to the 2011 Fee Schedule that CMS issued on Dec. 30.

However the good news is that your payments should not drop.

Your 2011 conversion factor will stand at $33.9764, a net reduction of 7.86 percent from the 2010 conversion factor of 36.8729.

The Medicare and Medicaid Extenders Act of 2010, which was signed into law on December 15, established a payment update for 2011 of zero percent. In order to cover the cost of the legislation, Medicare has to modify provisions in the proposed 2011 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule final rule, which altered some of the RVUs, as well as the conversion factor. But then as the conversion factor went down, most of the RVUs went up, ensuring that you should not notice any payment woes over the changes.

Article source :- http://isupercoder.blogspot.in/2011/02/2011-conversion-factor-will-stand-at.html

For example, the RVUs for outpatient E/M code 99212 will change from the 2010 rate of 1.08 to a higher rate of 1.22 this year. Multiplied by the conversion factors for their respective years, the payment for 99212 this year will still be higher than it was last year, despite this year's low conversion factor (2010 payment was around $39.82 compared to the 2011 payment of approximately $41.45).