CMS has released its preliminary decisions on potential changes to outpatient supervision level requirements for a number of medical services in response to recommendations made last month by the Hospital Outpatient Payment (HOP) Panel. Notably, CMS proposes not to change the supervision level from direct to general for several codes describing injection and intravenous infusion of chemotherapy or other highly complex drugs or complex biological agents. While CMS is proposing to maintain the direct supervision standard for chemotherapy administration, the agency is raising the question of whether to distinguish the supervision level between initial and subsequent administrations of a given chemotherapeutic or biological agent. CMS will accept comments on the preliminary supervision level determinations until April 30, 2014, and final decisions will be effective on July 1, 2014.
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