Resource-based relative value scale (RBRVS) is a schema used to determine how much money medical providers should be paid.
For example, in 2005, a generic 99213 Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code was worth 1.39 Relative Value Units, or RVUs.
[6] William Hsiao was the principal investigator who organized a multi-disciplinary team of researchers, which included statisticians, physicians, economists and measurement specialists, to develop the RBRVS.
In 1988 the results were submitted to the Health Care Financing Administration (today CMS) to be used in the American Medicare system.
In December of the following year, President George H. W. Bush signed into law the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989, switching Medicare to an RBRVS payment schedule.
Physicians bill their services using procedure codes developed by a seventeen-member committee known as the CPT Editorial Panel.