Comparison of GPCI Rental Index to Three Sources of Commercial Office Rents

摘要

Medicare carriers adjust the national Medicare (Physician) Fee Schedule relativevalues locally by input price indexes, termed geographic practice cost indexes (GPCIs), to account for justifiable geographic differences in physician's cost. One geographic adjustment factor used to derive the practice expense of GPCI is an office rental index. The study is a comparison of three commercial rent sources--U.S. Postal Service (PS) data, General Services Administration (GSA) data, and Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) data to the current U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) fair market rent (FMR) data that has been used by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) from 1992-1994 in the rent index. The primary conclusion is that the FMR cannot be replaced with any of the three commercial rent sources identified in the study. HUD data is