Comparison of 2015 Medicare relative value units for gender-specific procedures: Gynecologic/gyn-oncologic vs urologic CPT coding

abstract
Comparison of 2015 Medicare relative value units for gender-specific procedures: Gynecologic and gynecologic-oncologic versus urologic CPT coding. Has time healed gender-worth?

For total fee/reimbursement, 42 (84%) male based procedures were compensated at a higher rate than the paired female procedures. On average, male specific surgeries were reimbursed at an amount that was 27.67% higher for male procedures than for female-specific surgeries.

Background

In 1992, Congress implemented a relative value unit (RVU) payment system to set reimbursement for all procedures covered by Medicare. In 1997, data supported that a significant gender bias existed in reimbursement for gynecologic compared to urologic procedures. The present study was performed to compare work and total RVU's for gender specific procedures effective January 2015 and to evaluate if time has healed the gender-based RVU worth.

 Highlights

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Comparison of RVUs identified 72% of male procedures were weighted more for work and total RVU's.

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84% of procedures were compensated at a higher rate for the male specific procedures.

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Unfortunately, time has not yet normalized procedural gender-worth.

Keywords

• RVU;
• Gender bias;
• CPT code;
• Compensation;
• MACRA;
• RUC