Senate bill seeks to curb 25% cut for same-day imaging

Senators Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and David Vitter (R-La.) introduced S. 2347, the Diagnostic Imaging Services Access Protection Act in the U.S. Senate on April 25. 

This legislation, which is supported by the American College of Radiology, is seeking to stop the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) from implementing a 25 percent reduction to the professional component of certain diagnostic imaging services for multiple imaging studies administered to the same patient, by physicians in the same practice setting, on the same day.

This CMS policy assumes that there are considerable efficiencies when radiologists interpret successive imaging studies during a single patient visit, however, a peer-reviewed expert panel found these efficiencies to be much less significant than CMS has assumed, according to the ACR. In its commentary of the policy, the college added the legislation prevents CMS from implementing this reduction until an expert panel convened by the Institute of Medicine conducts a study of professional component efficiencies.

S. 2347 joins its House companion bill, HR 3269, introduced by U.S. Representatives Pete Olson (R-Texas) and Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), which currently has 234 cosponsors.