Home Health & Hospice Week

Expect your referring physicians to be scrambling as their 27 percent Medicare pay cut looms Jan. 1. CMS released the proposed 2013 physician fee schedule July 6, and it's scheduled for publication in the Federal Register July 30.

The pay cut won't affect all docs equally, however. Due to RVU reconfigurations, some specialties (primary care) will fare better than others (cardiologists, opthalmologists).

Getting a "doc fix" bill passed in an election year will be a tough job, experts predict. That may lead to physicians taking extreme measures, such as threatening to no longer see Medicare patients.

The American Medical Association hopes to eliminate the need for eleventh-hour fixes with a new proposed payment formula that would revamp how Medicare pays physicians. On July 11, AMA President-elect Ardis Dee Hoven testified before Congress about the association's idea to scrap the current Medicare physician payment formula and replace it with several "care delivery models" that would allow doctors to avoid the "current one size fits all formula," Hoven told Congress. Proposal details are in Hoven's testimony at www.ama-assn.org/resources/doc/washington/medicarephysician-payment-policy-testimony-11july2012.pdf.