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...

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,...