In June, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published its final rule for lab fee schedule changes. As with the proposal (see IBO 10/15/15), private rates for clinical lab diagnostic tests will be set according to the weighted median reported rates of private payors, with limitations. New to the final rule is the implementation date of January 1, 2018, rather than 2017. The initial data collection period remained January–June 2016. In addition, the definition of an “applicable lab” was revised to allow for inclusion of more hospital outreach labs. The definition of an “advanced diagnostic laboratory test” was modified to include protein-only tests, in addition to molecular pathology tests of DNA or RNA. The definition was also expanded to include tests conducted at labs with more than one location

Source: Lexology.com