21.2% Cut on Medicare Reimbursement Starts Today!...April Fools or Not?

9:43 AM Posted by exclusiveMD

Unfortunately this is not an April Fools Joke. After a few small extensions, Congress has put into effect a 21.2% cut on Medicare that affects both patients and physicians. For those that do not understand how this affects everyone, let me explain. First of all, Medicare sets the fees and everyone (other private insurers) uses their fees for a benchmark to set theirs around. What that means is that if Medicare decides to reimburse less to physicians for services, than typically all other third party insurers will follow in suit. Did you know that currently in the traditional model of health care delivery that for every $1.00 that a physician charges he can only expect $0.40 in return. With this cut potentially the $0.40 may turn into $0.32 to a dollar. In the world of primary care, in the private sector, that cut may prove to be so devastating that it causes some to close their doors. When cuts like this occur, one of the ways for doctors to improve or stabilize their bottom end is to see MORE patients. Currently the national average of doctor's time spent with patients is 4-7 minutes per visit. So the only way to feasibly see more patients is to work more hours in the day or decrease the actual time spent per patient. Both of those options are not good for patients or doctors.

The real question is how does this 21.2% Medicare cut affect Exclusive MD. It doesn't! We will still offer the same service averaging our annual visit times at around 60-90 minutes and offering the same great service we started with at an affordable cost.
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1 comments:

  1. Matt said...

    For those physicians who still choose to take Medicare patients, at least their cuts won't go into effect until at least April 12th with the Easter break that Congress is taking... don't they take enough breaks? Sheesh.

    If the cuts do come about, I won't be surprised if more and more physicians stop seeing Medicare patients altogether.

    My girlfriend is a dentist and it's common practice in Missouri for private practices to not see any Medicare dental patients because the reimbursement is so low that they lose money on every patient.

    So much for empowering the American people to run their own business in order to make a living!

    God Bless America... that still holds true, right?