Trends in Medicare Reimbursement for Interventional Radiology Procedures: 2007–2020

Purpose: Declining physician reimbursement has been occurring across multiple specialties due to changes in Medicare legislation, including the Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act (DRA), the Balanced Budget Act, and the Sustainable Growth Rate. The purpose of this study was to evaluate trends in Medicare reimbursement rates for various procedural classes in interventional radiology from 2007 to 2020. Methods: Common interventional radiology procedures were selected across multiple procedural classes: gastrointestinal, biliary, urinary, fallopian dilatation, other injection/change/removal, iliac vascular, femoral/popliteal vascular, tibial/peroneal vascular, hepatobiliary, and vascular emergency. The Physician Fee Schedule Look-Up Tool from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services was queried for current procedural terminology (CPT) codes to extract reimbursement data. All monetary data were adjusted for inflation using the United States consumer price index (CPI). The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and average annual change in reimbursement were calculated based on these adjusted trends. Results: Aside from urinary and vascular emergency procedures, all other procedural classes experienced decreases in inflation-adjusted Medicare reimbursement from 2007 to 2020. The greatest mean decrease in reimbursement rates was observed in biliary procedures (-$21.25), while the largest mean increase in reimbursement rates was observed in vascular emergency procedures ($3.23). All procedures with increases in reimbursement rates and 36.8% of procedures with decreases in reimbursement rates have a CPT code change between 2007 and 2020. Conclusion: After accounting for inflation, reimbursement rates were shown to decline for all procedural classes except for urinary and vascular emergencies. Congressional policies, such as the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) and the Medicare Access and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Reauthorization Act of 2015, may clarify some of these trends.