Review of Alternative GPCI Payment Locality Structures-Final Report

Medicare is statutorily required to adjust payments for physician fee schedule services to account for differences in costs due to geographic location. There are currently 89 different localities which have not been revised since 1997.  The report titled “Review of Alternative GPCI Payment Locality Structures-Final Report” finalizes the interim locality study that was originally posted to the website on August 21, 2008.

At this time we are not proposing to make any changes to the payment localities.  We are posting this final report to finalize the information contained in our interim study of alternative PFS locality payment configurations.  For a detailed discussion of the public comments on the contractor's interim locality study report, we refer readers to the CY 2010 PFS proposed rule (74 FR 33534) and subsequent final rule with comment period (74 FR 61757).

The final report entitled: "Review of Alternative GPCI Payment Locality Structures-Final Report" and appendices, which was produced by Acumen, LLC under contract to CMS, may be found in the “Downloads” section below.