Medicare announced that they have changed the Medicare Fee Schedule for Jan 1 - March 31st as part of a last minute technical correction. CMS has revised the Jan. 1 through March 31 conversion factor from $35.8013 to $35.7547. So the MACs have to have time to remove the current fee schedule and place the new changes, and CMS is giving them to have this information posted no later than Jan. 20, 2015. In order to facilitate corrections and provide time for contractors to update their payment files, CMS issued the following announcement regarding processing of Medicare claims during the first two weeks of January:
"Holding of 2015 Date-of-Service Claims for Services Paid Under the 2015 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule
On November 13, 2014, the CY 2015 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) final rule was published in the Federal Register. In order to implement corrections to technical errors discovered after publication of the MPFS rule and process claims correctly, Medicare Administrative Contractors will hold claims containing 2015 services paid under the MPFS for the first 14 calendar days of January 2015 (i.e., Thursday January 1 through Wednesday January 14). The hold should have minimal impact on provider cash flow as, under current law, clean electronic claims are not paid sooner than 14 calendar days (29 days for paper claims) after the date of receipt.
MPFS claims for services rendered on or before Wednesday Dec 31, 2014 are unaffected by the 2015 claims hold and will be processed and paid under normal procedures and time frames."
You can get the files at http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Medicare-Fee-for-Service-Payment/PhysicianFeeSched/PFS-Relative-Value-Files-Items/RVU15A.html?DLPage=1&DLSort=0&DLSortDir=descending
Full details: http://www.cms.gov/Outreach-and-Education/Outreach/FFSProvPartProg/Provider-Partnership-Email-Archive-Items/2014-12-29-enews-SE.html