"Medicare Should Pay Doctors More, Not Less, For Treating The Sickest Patients" - Timothy Sullivan, MD
Some doctors don’t like to admit it, but money can have a major influence on physicians’ behaviors. For years, Medicare seemed to recognize this by paying doctors more for complicated patient visits and less for straightforward ones. In addition to properly compensating physicians for challenging work, this payment schedule helped encourage them to take on complex, time-consuming cases. The federal government recently announced plans to drastically alter Medicare payments to physicians by instituting a flat rate per visit, regardless of how sick a patient is. This change, which is slated to start in 2019, could have unintended — and harmful — consequences for patients with severe illnesses. Timothy Sullivan, MD, assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai said “the effects of this policy could be catastrophic. Doctors will be pressured by clinic administrators to see more patients each day to maintain revenue, which will encourage them to treat more patient with simpler problems and fewer with complex, time-consuming health issues.”
- Timothy Sullivan, MD, Assistant Professor, Medicine, Infectious Diseases, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai