An Inside Look at Health Care for the Elderly and Medicare

A year ago HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced that Medicare would be dramatically altering the way doctors are paid. She stated that starting in 2019 physician and NP salaries will be based on Quality and Value, a very noble proclamation that, on the surface, sparkles of a transformative change in the landscape of health care. At the time of her announcement I wrote an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun (CLICK HERE for a link to the article) questioning how CMS intended to defi

There is no question that CMS has every right to demand better value in health care. Medicare’s coffers are being drained, as a significant amount of funding is being spent on fruitless efforts to keep people alive in their last weeks of life, on expensive tests and procedures that have no proven efficacy, on needless hospitalization, and on a proliferation of specialization that increases cost with worse outcomes. The Institute of Medicine estimated that in 2009 there was

How can quality be measured in health care? Certainly Medicare feels that they have the answer. Half of primary care doctors’ MIPS grades will be based on how we prove that our care is “quality” care. And since our grade will determine our salary, this stuff is really important. You may think that if we are taking good care of our patients based on their individual wants and needs, if we take time to talk to them about their medical problems, if we avoid overtreatment and