Medicare Physician Fee Schedule: 2017 Medicare Fee Schedule Brings Good News for Emergency Physicians

Why This Topic Matters

Annual Medicare fee schedule updates can affect budgeting, reimbursement expectations, and specialty-level payment trends. This piece helps readers quickly assess whether the 2017 changes materially affected emergency medicine and what broader Medicare payment adjustments were in play.

Article Sections

1. Overview of 2017 Medicare physician fee schedule impact

   Summarizes the overall 2017 payment outlook for emergency medicine and related service categories. It also notes the general specialty-level impact reported in the final rule.

2. Specialty-level winners and losers

   Describes the broad groups of specialties that experienced small positive or negative estimated impacts. The section provides a high-level view of how different physician specialties were affected.

3. Conversion factor increases based on PAMA half percent update

   Explains the annual conversion factor update and the policy factors contributing to the 2017 Medicare rate change. It also references the published final-rule figures associated with the update.