April 7, 2015 - Curant Health President and CEO, Patrick Dunham, featured in FierceHealthcare - The House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill to permanently repeal the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula last month, but if the Senate also approves it, the fix may create a new set of problems, according to Vox.
Under the repeal plan, Medicare will now pay doctors based on how well they do their jobs, but it is hazy on how the government will accomplish this. "I'm very skeptical of this," Urban Institute Fellow Robert Berenson told Vox. "It's really absurd that we don't have any measures for most doctors that can place a value on their performance."
Fiscal conservatives take issue with the legislation as well, noting that it only provides for $35 billion in spending cuts over 10 years, compared to Medicare's projected $9 trillion in expenditures over the same timeframe, according to the Associated Press.
Part of the problem is that the 265-page bill doesn't establish which quality metrics Medicare will use as its basis for payments, and for many specialties, the best measure for care quality isn't available in patient claims, according to Vox. And the metric-setting process outlined by the bill requires the government to solicit quality indicators from doctor groups, essentially letting them set their own standards, according to the article.
To read the full article, featuring Patrick, visit FierceHealthcare.
To learn more about Curant Health, contact Kristin Lindsey, Marketing Director, at klindsey@curanthealth.com.