Physician Signature Rule

CMS plans to rescind the requirement for clinical laboratories to obtain physician signatures when billing Medicare for laboratory requisitions. Labs lobbied hard to CMS to repeal this burden. This was part of the November 29, 2010 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final rule. Due to heavy criticism the required implementation was delayed until April 1, 2011. Now it is being completely repealed before ever being implemented. That is a good thing. But....

The real issue here is how much does it cost to continually delay, modify and repeal onerous and burdensome paperwork dreamed up by bureaucrats with little to no clinical experience "in the trenches". Maybe if they listen to the doctors struggling day to day in private practice first, then they would avoid costing taxpayers presumably millions of dollars in "change fees".