Written by Laura Dyrda
The International Society for the Advancement of Spine Surgery wrote a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services commenting on the physician fee schedule for 2015, focusing on RVU valuation for CPT code 27279 dealing with minimally invasive sacroiliac joint procedures.
“We are concerned that the valuation the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has assigned to this new CPT code is inappropriate because the intraservice time, technical skill and total resource utilization reflected in the work RVUs assigned to this code are not appropriately reflective of this procedure.” 
The code currently has a work valuation of 9.03, and after performing a paired comparison survey and reviewing the Reference Service List the surveying societies used, ISASS felt there were bias and inappropriate codes utilized. The most comparable CPT code, 63030, was removed from the RSL.
The organization would like CMS to reconsider the RVU.