Primary care physicians could see payment increases under proposed rule

To better educate physicians about the focus on primary care in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed physician fee schedule, Andy Slavitt, the CMS acting administrator, and Patrick Conway, MD, the CMS acting principal deputy administrator and chief medical officer, outlined the various ways they’re boosting the profile of primary care in a recent blog post.

Primary care physicians providing certain services in the Medicare program could see a 2% or more pay increase under the proposed physician fee schedule.

“Over time, if all of the practitioners that can provide these services provide them to all eligible patients, we estimate that the payment increase could be as much as 30% to geriatricians and 37% to family physicians,” the authors write.

Learn more about the agency’s proposals for primary care payments and its four-part strategy to emphasize primary care in the blog post “Focusing on Primary Care for Better Health.”

Quoted

Recently Laura Wooster, MPH, the AOA vice president of public policy, was quoted in a MedPage Today article about the proposed 2017 Medicare physician fee schedule.

“Everything in here really does seem to be pushing towards a system where physicians can be appropriately paid for doing all the things, other than the actual treatments or procedures, that are so important to keeping people healthy or helping them get better,” Wooster told Medpage Today.