Doctor Pay Incentives

By Quinn Phillips Last year here at Diabetes Flashpoints, we discussed how changing the way Medicare pays for services — away from the current system of paying for individual procedures, and toward a system in which medical networks are paid a lump sum for each patient — has the potential both to improve outcomes and to lower the cost of care. For such a system to work, however, all doctors would have to join a network that can provide a full range of medical services. These networks, whose formation for purposes of Medicare payment was enabled by the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare"), remain in their infancy, although they may take off in the future if Medicare provides the right incentives. In the meantime, Medicare is trying to cut costs and improve outcomes another way: by basing part of doctors' pay on the quality of their care, as measured by Medicare. According to an article published last week by Kaiser Health News, Medicare will begin quality-based payments in 2015 for doctors in large medical groups, those that comprise at least 100 medical professionals. In 2016 Medicare will move to cover doctors in medium-size practices — 10–99 members — and in 2017 it will cover all remaining doctors. Although the Affordable Care Act requires Medicare to institute quality-based pay incentives, the law gives the agency a great deal of freedom to design the program, other than requiring that the incentives be cost-neutral. This means that increa...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs