This will affect all Histology practitioners🙂
Publication Date: Jul 11, 2022
In a huge win for ASCP members, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced it adopted data from ASCP’s 2019 Wage Survey to update labor costs for laboratory personnel. The advocacy win was revealed in CMS’s CY 2023 Physician Fee Schedule Proposed Rule.
The policy change affects the proposed labor costs associated with services performed by histotechnologists. The policy change came as a result of research and advocacy by ASCP and College of American Pathologists staff. CMS’s will have an important impact on the payment rates for pathology services, particularly those with significant technical component work by histotechnologists.
Prior to CMS proposing to update clinical labor costs, the labor costs for histotechnologists was set at 0.37¢ per minute for CY 2021. CMS will update the rate for histotechnologists to 0.64¢ per minute in CY 2023, an increase of 73 percent over the CY 2021 rate.