Physician Fee Schedule 2027: What physicians need to know now

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the calendar year 2027 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule on July 14, and it is not a quiet one. The headline is another pay cut: 1.68% for physicians outside advanced alternative payment models and 1.19% for those inside one. Both come from the expiration of the 2.5% increase Congress wrote for 2026 alone.

Underneath that, the rule rewrites a fair amount of how primary care gets paid.

The G2211 complexity add-on becomes a percentage modifier. A second modifier pays accountable care organization (ACO) physicians double. Same-day evaluation and management (E/M) visits billed alongside procedures get cut in half. Remote monitoring can no longer be staffed by contractors. And the practice expense methodology begins a multi-year separation from the American Medical Association (AMA) survey data it has leaned on since 2007.

Related content: What health care groups are saying about the 2027 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule

The slideshow details 10 changes in the proposal that will land on a practice, drawn from the rule and CMS' fact sheets. Comments are due Sept. 14.