WOCN Society Comments on the Future of Global Surgical Codes

As you may know, CMS had proposed to eliminate the 10- and 90-day global surgery codes. These codes include the patient visit on the day of the procedure, the procedure itself, and any complications resulting from the surgery, and all follow-up care during the 10- or 90-day recovery period. CMS has found that global codes may pay for more follow-up care than is usually furnished to Medicare patients resulting in their proposal to eliminate the 10- and 90-day global payments for all care settings. In addition, CMS currently has no way to value the services provided during this period because they are not billed separately.   

However, a coalition of surgical groups led by the American College of Surgeons successfully included language in the Medicare Access and Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) to precluded CMS from moving forward with its plan to transition 10- and 90-day global codes to 0-day global codes. With that legislation becoming law, CMS was forced to abandon its plan change the payment structure of the global codes, but was charged with collecting data on the value of the services provided during the global periods and use that data to revise the global services starting in 2019. To this end, CMS called for comments on how best to gather this data and the WOCN Society submitted comments which can be found here >>

The WOCN Society will continue to work with CMS as they determine the future of global services.