Governor eliminates revenue-neutral requirement for fee schedule updates

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont enacted a bill eliminating the requirement that medical fee schedule updates be revenue-neutral.

The governor on Monday signed H.B. 5605, which eliminates a statute that required the conversion to Medicare’s resource-based relative value scale to be revenue-neutral.

Connecticut lawmakers in 2007 ordered the Workers Compensation Commission to convert the medical fee schedule to Medicare’s RBRVS instead of paying a percentage of usual and customary charges. The statute ordering the new fee schedule required that it not increase or decrease overall payments for medical services — in other words, that the transition be revenue-neutral.

H.B. 5605 eliminates the revenue-neutral requirement and allows changes to the fee schedule for work comp medical providers that increase overall payments when the Workers Compensation Commission updates the fee schedule.

The bill takes effect July 1.