With an increased focus on payment and productivity measurement in health care, it is essential to understand the genesis and principles behind the Medicare Resource-Based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS) physician fee schedule. The majority of third-party payers, including a growing number of Medicaid programs and commercial payers, use variations of the Medicare RBRVS as their basis for physician...

As happens every year, on July 1, 2012, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a proposed policy and payment rate for services furnished under the Medicare physician fee schedule for 2013. The proposed rule would provide certified registered nurse anesthetists to practice independent interventional pain management. Other issues, though no less important, include a 27% sustainable...

The 22 modifier is a Current Procedural Terminology code modifier that allows surgeons to receive additional reimbursement for complex procedures. The goal of this study was to evaluate the rate of, time to, and factors affecting reimbursement for 22-modifier cases filed by orthopedic surgeons. The authors reviewed the charts and billing data of the 150 noncharity spine and total joint replacem...

task graph scheduling is a multi-objective optimization and np-hard problem. in this paper a new algorithm on homogeneous multiprocessors systems is proposed. basically, scheduling algorithms are targeted to balance the two parameters of time and energy consumption. these two parameters are up to a certain limit in contrast with each other and improvement of one causes reduction in the other on...

The scheduling of cannabis under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) has established legal precedents that determine how scientific evidence affects its regulation in the United States. This background challenges three common fallacies that make it seem marijuana prohibition is the only viable policy outcome. A contemporary effort to reschedule cannabis is based on recent findings that have est...

This paper analyzes optimal pricing for information goods under incomplete information, when both unlimited-usage (fixed-fee) pricing and usage-based pricing are feasible. For a general set of customer characteristics, it is shown that in the presence of contract administration costs, offering fixed-fee pricing in addition to a non-linear usage-based pricing scheme is always profitimproving, an...