What Is Rvu In Medical Terms

The fee for each service depends on its relative value units rvus which rank on a common scale the resources used to provide each service.

What is rvu in medical terms. These resources include the physician s work the expenses of the. A comparable service measure used by hospitals to permit comparison of the amounts of resources required to perform various services within a single department or between departments. Although compensation as defined in employment agreements differs in terms of rvu thresholds and dollars per rvu the general intent of the rvu model is to pay physicians based on the amount of work performed regardless of the payer mix or amount of revenue generated. There are several factors that affect the amount that will actually be reimbursed.

Cpt codes are copyright 2019 american medical association. When calculating a relative value unit rvu it s easy to become overwhelmed by the math. He is an associate professor of clinical medicine at weill cornell medical college and attending physician in the department of hematology oncology at the new york presbyterian weill cornell medical center. Historically a private group of 29 mostly specialist physicians the american medical association s specialty society relative value scale update committee ruc have largely determined medicare s rvu.

The sum of the three geographically weighted rvu values is then multiplied by the medicare conversion factor to obtain a final price. It is determined by assigning weight to such factors as personnel time level of skill and sophistication of equipment required to render. In medical billing wrvu and rvu basically serve the same purpose of providing a standard of measure in physician compensation. Relative value units rvus january 12 2015 medicare uses a physician fee schedule to determine payments for over 7 500 physician services.

Prior to the implementation of the rbrvs in 1992 physicians set charge rates for the medical care they provided to patients. For example if the threshold is 300 rvus and a doctor gets 350 rvus a month he or she will receive 1894 5 50 rvus x 37 89 as the incentive. When a provider. Originally created as the principle unit of the rbrvs for cms rvus became the foundation of the medicare physician fee schedule mpfs as well as the basis of most commercial fee schedules.

In wrvu compensation is based on the activity of a doctor. A comparable service measure used by hospitals to permit comparison of the amounts of resources required to perform various services within a single department or between departments. However if you can look beyond the calculations you ll find that the rvu is actually a good barometer of practice efficiency and patient complexity and it can provide helpful insights into performance says andy swanson vice president of consulting services at the medical group. It is determined by assigning weight to such factors as personnel time level of skill and sophistication of equipment required to render patient services.

Doru paul md is triple board certified in medical oncology hematology and internal medicine.