Senate
Finance Chairman Addresses Physician Specialties on Payment
Update Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-MT)
called a meeting with the physician specialties, including
the ACC, on April 11 to discuss his goal to move legislation
that stops the 10.6 percent Medicare physician payment cut
before July 1 and provides an 18-month Medicare physician
payment update. Baucus stated his commitment to continuing
funding for the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI)
and extending provisions to help physicians in rural areas.
Baucus intends to bring a Medicare bill to the Senate floor
in May. Under the plan Baucus is proposing, physicians would
face even steeper cuts in 2010. He encouraged the specialties
to help find a long-term solution to the flawed payment formula
before 2010.
Senate
Finance Committee Adds Language to Limit Physician-Owned Specialty
Hospitals The Senate Finance Committee on April 11 added language
to the Farm Bill that would significantly prohibit the existence
and growth in physician-owned specialty hospitals. The Farm
Bill provides agricultural subsidies and payments to farmers,
along with food stamps and nutrition programs. The language
was included to offset a portion of the legislation's expenditures
related to disaster aid and agriculture-related tax credits.
Efforts to undermine physician-owned hospitals have been present
in other bills, such as the House version of the mental health
parity bill and the Children's Health and Medicare Protection
Act of 2007. If the specialty hospital language is not included
in the Farm Bill, there is a possibility that lawmakers will
attempt to add it to other bills.
The ACC opposes language to prohibit the existence and growth
in physician-owned specialty hospitals and urges members to
call their Senators and Representatives to urge them to remove
the specialty hospital language from the Farm Bill, or any
other legislation. To contact your lawmakers directly, call
the ACC toll-free grassroots hotline at 1-800-210-7193.
REGULATORY
AND PAYER
MedPAC
Recommends Pilot Program for 'Bundled' Payments The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission on April
9 voted to recommend a pilot program that would issue a single
payment to hospitals and physicians delivering treatment for
certain episodes of care. Commissioners hope that the program
will encourage physicians and hospitals to work together to
provide more efficient care, with less redundancy and waste.
Under the program, working together to provide more efficient
care would provide the participating physicians and hospitals
with a greater bundled payment for the treatment. However,
physicians and hospitals lack a history of working together
to provide care, according to MedPAC commissioners.
MedPAC’s efforts to restructure payment systems are
in a relatively early stage and may not have a broad impact
on payment policies for some time. Cardiologists, though,
are almost certain to see the effects of the trend toward
bundling in CPT coding for cardiovascular physician services
in the next few years. The ACC, in collaboration with the
cardiovascular specialty societies, is working closely with
the CPT Editorial Panel and the RVS Update Committee to ensure
that the transition to a new coding approach results in accurate
codes and fair values for cardiovascular services.
CMS
Proposes New Quality Measures Related to CV Surgery The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
(CMS) on Monday proposed new regulations that would add 43
quality measures to the list of measures that hospitals need
to report to receive the full annual payment update for their
services. The new measures include 15 related to cardiovascular
surgery. The regulation also includes proposals to update
Medicare payment rates and policies for inpatient hospitals
for 2009, which would increase Medicare payments to acute
care hospitals by an estimated $4 billion. In addition, the
regulation includes an expansion to the list of "preventable
errors" that the agency will not provide payment for
if a patient acquires them during a hospital stay. The proposed
regulations would apply to patients who receive a hospital
discharge during fiscal year 2009, which begins on Oct. 1.
Comments on the proposal will be accepted until June 13,
and CMS will finalize the rule on or before August 1. For
more information about the proposed regulations, click
here.
