Yet another threat of a Medicare payment cut makes it hard for physician practices to budget and could have “serious ramifications” for practices across the country, said William F. Jessee, MD, CEO of the Medical Group Management Association.
Jessee spoke Tuesday at a news conference at the group’s annual convention in Denver. The MGMA has 22,500 members, many of them administrators and managers of medical groups across the country.
Physicians face a 21.5 percent cut in Medicare payments on January 1 under the government’s SGR (sustainable growth rate) formula. Congress has frequently modified the rate to avoid reductions in payment, and last year avoided a cut and gave doctors a 0.5 percent increase in payments.
“If they don’t fix it, the ramifications could be pretty severe,” Jessee said.
“If there is a fix to be had, it will be an expensive one," he acknowledged, but “kicking the can down the road” would continue to add to the reimbursement nightmare.
“This is called digging your way out of a hole by digging it deeper,” he said.
The uncertainty over whether physicians will be hit with a cut this year, or whether Congress will postpone it again, could hurt EHR implementation promoted in the government’s economic stimulus package, Jessee said. Rather than buying an EHR system to begin implementation now – as they have been advised to do in order to qualify for the government incentives – physicians are sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what happens, he said.
The MGMA and 59 other healthcare associations sent a letter to Congress and the administration in May calling for the elimination of the SGR mechanism.
“The SGR should be repealed this year and replaced with an update system that reflects increases in physicians’ and other health professionals’ practice costs,” the letter stated. “A realistic budget baseline for future Medicare payment updates, which accurately reflects the anticipated costs of providing physicians with positive updates under a new update system in lieu of SGR-related cuts, should be incorporated into the federal budget.”