Medicare cuts pay for some services
Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, November 1, 2006
WASHINGTON – Doctors caring for the elderly and the disabled will see a 5 percent cut in reimbursement rates when they treat Medicare patients next year.
But in an effort to give more personalized care, the government will pay physicians more to counsel patients on ways to improve their health.
Doctors warned that that the lower rates would lead to fewer doctors taking on new Medicare cases.
The new rates were announced in rules the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services made public Wednesday.
Doctors are paid for 7,000 different services. The average cut for a particular service is 5 percent; some services are reduced more, while other services are increasing. For instance, payments will go up by about one-third for office visits – the most frequently billed service.
The rules affecting 900,000 doctors “will encourage physicians to spend more time with their patients, assessing their health status and educating them about how to live longer, healthier lives,” said the agency’s administrator, Leslie Norwalk.
Nearly half of physicians face payment cuts ranging from 6 percent to 20 percent, the American Medical Association said.
For the great majority of primary care physicians, the overall cut “will negate any payment increases specific to physician office visit payments,” said Dr. Cecil Wilson, chairman of the AMA’s board of trustees.
Since 2003, the formula has called for physicians to see their reimbursement rates cut, but Congress has intervened each year to suspend the formula.
