CMS Finalizes Medicare PFS, CLFS Cuts for 2025

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released its CY 2025 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) on November 1. As expected, average payment rates under the PFS fell by 2.8 percent in CY 2025. This cut is attributable to the expiration of several temporary payment updates Congress had enacted to offset cuts in the PFS for 2023 and 2024. ASCP is actively working with the American Medical Association and other medical societies to lobby Congress to reverse this projected cut.

One of the factors that has helped mitigate cuts in pathology services over the last few years (including this year) are the increases CMS made to the clinical labor rates for certain anatomic pathology services. CMS adopted data from ASCP’s biennial Wage Survey to increase certain technical component rates to reflect increased labor costs of certain laboratory professionals—specifically histotechnologists and cytotechnologists. CMS increased the per minute labor rate for histotechnologists by 15 percent and increased the clinical labor rate for cytotechnologists by 12 percent.

In addition, CMS finalized plans to impose cuts of up to 15 percent on approximately 800 laboratory tests reimbursed by the Medicare Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule (CLFS). These cuts stem from the Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA). ASCP has been lobbying Congress to enact the Saving Access to Laboratory Medicine Act, or SALSA to fix the flaws in the way CMS crafted the current CLFS payment rate system. 

While the prospects for SALSA are uncertain, ASCP is working with the American Clinical Laboratory Association to block the CLFS cuts for 2025 and to find a sustainable alternative moving forward.

To help ensure that Congress reverses the cuts in the PFS and blocks the cuts to the CLFS, ASCP is urging EVERYONE concerned about quality patient care and the future of pathology and laboratory medicine to contact their legislators and urge them to reverse the PFS and CLFS cuts. Please use ASCP’s eAdvocacy Center to send your congressional representatives this important message, click here.

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