Ep #130: The 2.5% Cut Nobody Warned You About

Has anyone on your billing team, your practice manager, or your specialty society actually told you the real number behind this year's Medicare cut? Not the 2.5% headline. What it works out to on your two highest-volume procedures.

In Episode 8, Jared breaks down CMS's CY2026 "Efficiency Adjustment," a 2.5% reduction to intraservice time work RVUs that explicitly exempts time-based care (office visits, care management, behavioral health, telehealth) and, by that same design, falls disproportionately on procedural and surgical work. For two of the highest-volume codes in orthopedics, total hip and total knee arthroplasty, CMS's own published figures show an overall reduction of 7.3% to 7.8%, well above the headline number.

Jared walks through what that actually costs a high-volume joint replacement practice in real dollars, using an illustrative planning range rather than a false-precision figure, and lays out three structural moves worth making regardless of politics: reviewing payer mix intentionally, accounting for Medicare-benchmarked commercial contracts, and re-running retirement plan funding projections before this year's numbers surprise you in Q4.

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The Ortho Money Show is produced by Capable Wealth, LLC, an investment adviser registered with the State of New York. This podcast is for educational purposes only, is not personalized investment, tax, or legal advice, and does not create an advisory relationship. Full disclosures and Form ADV available upon request.