In 1986 Congress, in cooperation with the American Medical Association, commissioned a respected health economist, William Hsiao of Harvard, to create what was ultimately called the resource-based relative value scale (RBRVS). The goal was to scientifically determine what each physician service was really worth. The researchers on Dr. Hsiao’s team would assign a work value to each of the seven thousand codes then in the American Medical Association’s Current Procedural Code Manual.
