Oh, It’s Just a Few Strings…by Pat Conrad MD

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Last November a group of state and specialty organizations released a joint letter with the AMA to the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services that recommended 10 principles to guide the implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), the Medicare reform law that repealed the sustainable growth rate formula.

In particular, the recommendations deal with alternative payment models (APM) and the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), which are intended to promote improvements in the delivery of care for Medicare patients. The proposals include terms like “improve quality reporting…diversity…be equitable…provide stability and resources…patient-centered care…” The format is a parade of timidity, the rhetoric a chorus of banality, and has all the impact of a strongly worded U.N. reprimand. Read it for yourself here.

These proposals are the basis for the latest “AMA Wire” piece on better payment models, which makes for even more painfully tedious perusal. Apparently the MACRA legislation provided “incentives and resources” to develop APM’s, which means more tax money will go to consultants and a few lucky doctors who can cash these checks in lieu of seeing patients, to create more haze.

New payment models:

  1. Payment for a high-value service – “…if the physician commits to use these services to increase quality” (Hahaha, well of course)
  2. Warrantied payment for physician services – “… practice can be paid more to prevent problems and complications of treatment, rather than being paid more to treat problems after they have occurred … similar to what other industries do when they offer warranties on their products.” (But those other industries are making standardized products, not treating virtually infinite individual variations)
  3. Multi-physician bundled payment – “two or more physicians can share a single, “bundled” payment to enable them to work together … without concern about individual practice revenue.” (Which should work about as well as putting two hungry dogs into a burlap sack and throwing it in the river)
  4. Physician-facility procedure bundle – “…a physician could share in savings achieved in the cost of a hospitalization through more efficient scheduling of services, competitive purchasing…” (So a family doc owning an interest in a radiology center is immoral and illegal according to the Stark Law, but that same doc colluding with a hospital corporation would be merely “efficient”.)
  5. Condition-based payment for a physician’s services – “…rather than basing the payment on the type of treatment the physician uses, payment is based on the extent of the patient’s needs” (And how many codes and prior authorizations will be required to define that??)
  6. Episode payment for a procedure – “…physicians receive a single payment for an “episode of care,” …and could benefit financially if they can eliminate unnecessary spending.” (Again, how is ‘unnecessary’ defined, and by whom?)
  7. Condition-based payment for all services related to a condition – “physicians receive a single payment for all of the care needed to manage a particular health condition …would give the physician the flexibility to use completely different procedures or treatments if they will achieve better outcomes at lower cost.” (Sigh…more quality reporting).

This entire miasma is an acceptance of the status quo premise, that Medicare must be strengthened and improved, and that the government knows best. This premise so contrary to the fiscal realities tightening around all of us is being enabled by cowardly doctors who produce the sort of gobbledygook cited above that will be both cover and invitation to further exploitation by hospital corporations, Big Insurance, and CMS itself, while the AMA will congratulate itself again for having a seat at the table.

Until there is the acceptance of a radical reform of Medicare & Medicaid that realistically deals with the high cost of sustaining these dependent, ravenous populations, these non-ideas will keep pitting gullible docs against each other while effectively protecting the real profiteers.