The customary charge is the amount which best represents the actual charges made for a given medical service by a physician to the physician's patients in general, or by suppliers of other medical and health services to the general public. The carrier obtains information on the customary charges of physicians and suppliers not only from the Medicare program, but from other available sources, e.g., from its own programs, from other insurance programs, from the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program, from TRICARE, from any studies conducted by State or local medical societies, and from public agencies. It also may ask physicians or other persons for their charges for services rendered to the public in general.

In instances where physicians or suppliers feel that the carrier does not have sufficient current information about their charges, they may volunteer this information to the carrier. Further, carriers make known their willingness to receive currently valid information regarding customary charges from the medical community. However, any information on charges obtained from other sources is validated, to the extent possible, against the carrier’s claims experience under Medicare and its own programs.

To the extent possible, when customary charges are calculated for a fiscal year, the actual charges physicians or suppliers have made for services rendered during the calendar year immediately preceding the start of the fiscal year (i.e., derived from either claims processed, or from claims for services rendered during the preceding calendar year) are used.

In calculating the customary charge for a given service, each charge the physician or other person has made for a service is arrayed in ascending order. The lowest actual charge which is high enough to include the median of the arrayed charge data is selected as the physician’s or supplier’s customary charge for the service. However, where the charges generally made by a physician or supplier to other patients are lower than those made to Medicare beneficiaries, the lower charges are used as the basis for establishing the Medicare reasonable charge screen.

When a carrier does not have adequate statistics on charges for all of a calendar year, e.g., for suppliers of medical equipment, prothestics, ambulance services, or for new services, the fees charged and the price lists in effect as of June 30 of that calendar year only may be used. The intent is to use a price list which can reasonably be assumed not to exceed the median of the prices charged by the supplier for items and services during that calendar year.

Where a carrier has permitted an increase in a customary charge under the unusual circumstances provision (see subsection C.), the increased amount is recognized as the customary charge for the next fiscal year if it exceeds the median of the charges made by the physician or supplier for the service during the calendar year immediately preceding the start of that fiscal year.

Once a carrier has established the customary charge screens for a fiscal year, further increases (other than to correct errors) are permitted only in individually identified and highly unusual situations where equity clearly indicates that the increases are warranted. Request for revisions in customary charge profiles are initiated only by physicians or suppliers furnishing covered services. Such requests are neither encouraged nor discouraged by the carrier, and each request is handled on its own merits. The following considerations are taken into account, as applicable, in determining whether unusual circumstances warrant a revision in a customary charge profile in a particular situation: