Medicare To Tie Doctors' Pay To Quality, Cost Of Care
Medicare News Thursday, April 19th, 2012Kaiser Health News: By Jordan Rau, KHN Staff Writer, APR 15, 2012.
Twenty thousand physicians in four Midwest states received a glimpse into their financial future last month. Landing in their e-mail inboxes were links to reports from Medicare showing the amount their patients cost on average as well as the quality of the care they provided. The reports also showed how Medicare spending on each doctor’s patients compared to their local peers in Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska.
The “resource use” reports, which Medicare plans to eventually provide to doctors nationwide, are one of the most visible phases of the government’s effort to figure out how to enact a complex, delicate and little-noticed provision of the 2010 health care law: paying more to doctors who provide quality care at lower cost to Medicare, and reducing payments to physicians who run up Medicare’s costs without better results.
Making providers routinely pay attention to cost and quality is widely viewed as crucial if the country is going to rein in its health care spending, which amounts to more than $2.5 trillion a year. It’s also key to keeping Medicare solvent. Efforts have already begun to change the way Medicare pays hospitals, physicians and other providers who agree to work together in new alliances known as “accountable care organizations.” This fall, the federal health program for 47 million seniors and disabled people also is adjusting hospital payments based on quality of care, and it plans to take cost into account as early as next year. Read More
