AAHKS members may have received an email from Kathy Bryant, Senior Technical Advisor, Hospital and Ambulatory Payment Group, and accompanying letter from Carol Blackford, Director, Hospital and Ambulatory Policy Group at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Center for Medicare requesting completion of a survey related to information on post-operative visits for total hip arthroplasty.

This is part of an ongoing, multi-year study CMS is doing on post-operative physician resources for several different operations. In 2014, CMS had proposed transforming all 10- and 90-day global surgery packages to 0-day global packages. Congress blocked this CMS proposal through the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, and instead directed CMS to value surgical services from a representative sample of physicians. Since 2017, CMS has been collecting claims-based data on post-operative visits furnished during the global period of specified procedures using CPT code 99024. CMS is also collecting data on pre- and post-operative services through direct survey.  The survey only request reporting on a total of five visits across different patients.

The current survey has been sent to a selection of high-volume utilizers of the codes listed below:

  • CPT codes 13100, 13101, 13120, 13121, 13131, 13132, 13151, and 13152 (complex repair procedures)
  • CPT code 27130 (total hip arthroplasty)
  • CPT code 66984 (cataract surgery)

The RAND Corporation and NORC at the University of Chicago are collecting the information on behalf of CMS and this is unrelated to the recent CMS Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule announcement regarding potentially misvalued CPT codes including total hip and total knee arthroplasty. For more information on the survey, please review the AAHKS Background Primer and visit the CMS FAQs.