Rewarding healthcare facilities and physicians with reimbursement incentives to convert records to an electronic system and go paperless might have gone by the wayside with Medicare reimbursement declines. So, other incentives may come into play….like “threats”. Adopt electronic medical records or lose your license to practice medicine. This is what Massachusetts is currently looking to [...]
The Medicare debate and the whim of Congress is sending a message that Medicare is or will be very unreliable. Physicians who depend on Medicare by as much as 31% of income to cover expenses will (or are currently) questioning the wisdom of being providers of Medicare. Although the promise of a permanent “doc fix” [...]
Today President Obama signed into law the Preservation of Access to Care for Medicare Beneficiaries and Pension Relief Act of 2010, more commonly known as the “doc fix”.This defers the slashing of Medicare reimbursements to doctors by 21.3% for services rendered as of June 1. However, this “reprieve” is only in effect until November. Mr. [...]
The year is 2017 -significant for the death knoll time when the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be completely exhausted. Not only has this not been affected by the healthcare reform legislation, savings are actually being taken from the Medicare fund to financially support new entitlements for younger Americans. This short-sighted fiasco will put the [...]
In the “eleventh hour”, the Senate approved the same proposal that it had rejected the day before to delay the 21.3% slashing of Medicare reimbursement fees along with 2.2% payment increases. Albeit, the reprieve is only for 6 months and brokered by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services [...]
Claims from physicians will still remain on hold until June 18th according to the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid while it is seen whether the Senate rescinds the decrease in Medicare reimbursements by 21.3%. President Obama addressed the issue in his weekly talk when he said ”I’m absolutely willing to take the difficult steps necessary [...]
According to the Florida Board of Medicine earlier this month, electronic medical systems incorrectly used or improperly designed emr programs may actually be creating more patient care errors than the old hand-written ones that they are designed to replace. “Doctors are being inundated by vendors who are selling newly developed electronic medical record systems, some [...]
Healthcare reform mandates that the individual citizen purchase health insurance. Those that do not comply by 2014 will have liens imposed on income or property for failure to purchase the coverage. But, is this mandate constitutional? Attorney Generals in 35 states are challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate. Lawyer Timothy Jost explained in the [...]
According to a new national Gallup survey of physicians, defensive medicine accounts for 26 percent of the nation’s healthcare costs–one in four dollars. Using the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimate of our healthcare at $2.5 trillion, defensive medicine drains some $650 billion per year out of the healthcare system. Calculating 2 years at this [...]
The Patient Action Network is a way to let your voice be heard regarding the healthcare reform debate and most recently about Medicare reimbursement rates and the debaucle that will ensue. With this in mind, I am forwarding this information on to you so that you may have an outlet for action. Don’t let government just dictate [...]
