Medicare May Pay More for Primary Care, Less for Procedures


Published On: July 3rd, 2009

stethoscopeWe mentioned yesterday that the feds are proposing their annual tweaks to the way Medicare pays doctors. But we were so busy geeking out on a proposed accounting change that we neglected to mention a few other details likely to be of interest: Namely, the feds want to increase Medicare payments to primary-care docs, and decrease payments to some specialists.

This is something that’s been bandied about for awhile, and there have been some small shifts in this direction. Still, specialists argue that they often have to train years longer than primary care doctors, and deserve higher pay. (They will still be paid more if the new Medicare payments take effect, but the gap between specialists and primary care docs might shrink a bit.)

CMS, the agency that runs medicare, is proposing a set of tweaks that would raise the fees Medicare pays for primary care by 6% to 8%, according to this statement. (The physicians included in this bucket are internists, family docs and geriatrics specialists.)

Medicare payments to cardiologists would be cut by 11% overall, with certain procedures (echocardiograms, cardiac catheterizations) facing steeper cuts, the WSJ says. Radiologists would see a cut of about 20% for doing high-tech scans such as CTs and MRIs.

If you want to dig into the details, you can read the entire proposal in the Federal Register.

Photo: iStockphoto


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Medicare May Pay More for Primary Care, Less for Procedures

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In 2001, rates of death from heart disease were 30 percent higher among African Americans than among whites

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