The Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula that constrains the annual
update to the Medicare payment rate is projected to reduce physician
payments by 24.4% in 2014, unless Congress intervenes.
Congress—that is, the “committees of jurisdiction”—is considering
sweeping changes to the payment system, including repeal of the SGR.
The legislators agree that the SGR is a flawed and unsustainable
mechanism.
All three committees will have conducted hearings within the four-week period that began on May 7th,
when the Health Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee held
its most recent hearing to discuss how the federal government, along
with physicians, could develop new payment policy. During a hearing
before the Senate Finance Committee on May 14th, the first
such hearing in six years, Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) said that it is
time “to repeal the SGR once and for all this year.” The House Energy
and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on...
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With a new calendar year
just over two months away, the medical and healthcare communities have
begun the annual flurry of end-game activity seeking to influence
payment rates. Anesthesiologists need little reminder of the
Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) threat and the 27 percent cut in Medicare
payment that will take effect on January 1, 2013, unless Congress
intervenes.
On October 15th,
more than 100 national medical societies, including the American Society
of Anesthesiologists, sent letters to the Senate Finance Committee, the
House Ways and Means Committee and the House Energy and Commerce
Committee highlighting the urgency of fixing the SGR problem for a new
reason:
The sustainable growth rate (SGR)
formula is an enormous impediment to successful health care delivery and
payment reforms that can improve the quality of patient care while
lowering growth in costs. Physicians facing the constant specter of
severe cuts under the SGR cannot invest their time,...
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