On The Health Care Blog (THCB), Dr. Vineet Arora argues that being a doctor is not as attractive as it once was. She writes: After all, why go into this much debt and spend so much time in training if your prospects are not much better? More recently, the New York Times article points out [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'Physician Compensation' Category
P4P and Diabetes Care
In April 2006, Ontario instituted the Diabetes Management Incentive (DMI) that increased payments to physicians that provided high-quality diabetes care. Did the incentive improve payments quality? According to a paper by Kantarevic and Kralj (2012), it turns out that the answer is yes, but the magnitude of the change depends on the type of physician. [...]
Read the rest of this entry »The Doc Fix and the Fiscal Cliff
President Barack Obama has signed the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which continues current Medicare payment rates for the nation’s physicians through Dec. 31, 2013. This bill nullifies the Sustainable Growth Rate which, if implemented, would have reduced Medicare payments to physicians by 26.5 percent. The doc fix will cost $10.6 billion in fiscal [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Physician Payments in the 1990s
One of my favorite health economists and bloggers is Austin Frakt of the Incidental Economist. In a recent paper, he examines whether new Health Reform provisions have learned from the mistakes in the 1990s from shifting provider reimbursement to a capitation based-system. To find the answer, you’ll need to read his commentary (with Rick Mayes) [...]
Read the rest of this entry »How does Geisinger Pay its Physicians?
Geisinger Health System is a physician-led, not-for-profit, integrated delivery system serving an area with approximately 2.6 million people in northeastern and central Pennsylvania with innovative products and services designed to drive higher performance. Geisinger is known for providing high quality care at low cost. How do they do it? Is it how they incentivize physicians? [...]
Read the rest of this entry »PQRS in 2013
Some background: Created in March 2007, the PQRI established a financial incentive for eligible healthcare professionals to participate in a voluntary quality reporting program. By reporting on a minimum of 3 measures on a specified group of patients, a physician can earn a bonus payment of 0.5% on all of their Medicare billing for 2012. [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Are young physicians better than old ones?
I can’t answer that. But I can tell you that young physicians are more likely to favor more costly medical intervetions. At least this is the conclusion of a recent study by Ateev Mehrotra and colleagues. They find: We found that physicians with fewer than ten years of experience had 13.2 percent higher overall costs [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Can closing a hospital improve the quality of care?
The closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital in the Village in New York City at first glance would reduce access to care for New York residents living in the area. To fill the void, however, a number of non-traditional providers have entered to fill the space. For instance, the number of stand-alone urgent care centers are [...]
Read the rest of this entry »If you have Medicare, will your physician refuse to treat you?
In the not to distant future, the answer may be yes. A report by Frazier and Foster (2009) examine how difficult it is for Medicare beneficiaries in Alaska to find a primary care doctor. “About 85% [of primary-car doctors in Alaska] choose the standard Medicare process (“participating”). Another 4% still work with the Medicare system [...]
Read the rest of this entry »The problem with a single payer system is…
setting accurate prices. A single payer does not have a market against which to measure prices; instead, single payers often pay based on provider’s reported cost or a multiplier related to the prices charged years ago when there was a market. Fortunately, the U.S. does not have this problem…or do we? The Relative Value Update [...]
Read the rest of this entry »