Contact Congress to Prevent Medicare Cuts to Occupational Therapy
Your voice is needed to stop Medicare cuts before the end of the year!
The final 2024 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule rule recently released by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services contains a 3.4% reduction to the conversion factor that will result in payment cuts to dozens of providers in 2024, including occupational and physical therapists.
As it has for the past three years, Congress must once again intervene before the end of the year and provide additional funding to the 2024 fee schedule to mitigate the proposed cuts to providers. With dwindling legislative days, we need your action as soon as possible.
Please take two minutes and send an email to US Representative Mary Peltola urging her to stop the proposed 2024 cuts to the Medicare fee schedule.
Here is an example of how to communicate this important issue:
As your constituent, I urge Congress to stop the impending 3.4% cut to Medicare providers in 2024 that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently finalized in the 2024 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule final rule. CMS acknowledges in the rule that due to budget neutrality requirements, the majority of the cut is created by the decision to increase payments for primary care services through the creation of the new G2211 code.
While additional investments in primary care physician services is critical, these increases are being paid for by an across-the-board cut to all clinicians, including non-physician providers such as physical therapists. Despite congressional intervention, therapists have been impacted by the 9.2% cut to the conversion factor since 2021 that has reduced overall payment. This figure doesn’t even include the 15% cut from the OTA (occupational therapy assistant) differential in 2022. This is simply not sustainable for providers and small health care businesses, especially for practices in rural and underserved areas. Further, therapists are facing these cuts when they are expecting a 4.6% increase in medical practice cost inflation in 2024, as measured by the Medicare economic index.
It is imperative that Medicare patients have access to the full range of essential health care services, including primary and therapy services. While there are many other concerns and reforms to the Medicare fee schedule that still need to be addressed, providing short-term stability to the fee schedule will help ensure patient access to care.
Again, please stop the full 3.4% cut to Medicare providers that will go into effect this January. Thank you.