Relative value units (RVUs) are a measure of value used in the United States
Medicare reimbursement formula for
physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
services.
RVUs are a part of the
resource-based relative value scale Resource-based relative value scale (RBRVS) is a schema used to determine how much money medical providers should be paid. It is partially used by Medicare in the United States and by nearly all health maintenance organizations (HMOs).
RBRVS assig ...
(RBRVS).
Background
Before RVUs were used, Medicare paid for physician services using "
usual, customary and reasonable Usual, customary, and reasonable (UCR) is an American method of generating health care prices, described as "more or less whatever doctors decided to charge". According to Steven Schroeder, Wilbur Cohen inserted UCR into the Social Security Act ...
" rate-setting which led to payment variability.
The
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989
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* ''Omnibus'' (UK TV series), an arts-based documentary programme
* ''Omnibus'' (U.S. TV series), an educational progr ...
enacted a Medicare fee schedule, and as of 2010 about 7,000 distinct physician services were listed.
The services are classified under a nomenclature based on the
Current Procedural Terminology
The Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code set is a procedural code set developed by the American Medical Association (AMA). It is maintained by the CPT Editorial Panel. The CPT code set describes medical, surgical, and diagnostic services and ...
(CPT) to which the
American Medical Association
The American Medical Association (AMA) is a professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. Founded in 1847, it is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was approximately 240,000 in 2016.
The AMA's stat ...
holds intellectual property rights.
Each service in the fee schedule is scored under the