Pain physician
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Physicians in the United States have been affected by significant changes in the pattern(s) of medical practice evolving over the last several decades. These changes include new measures to 1) curb increasing costs, 2) increase access to patient care, 3) improve quality of healthcare, and 4) pay for prescription drugs. Escalating healthcare costs have focused concerns about the financial solvency of Medicare and this in turn has fostered a renewed interest in the economic basis of interventional pain management practices. ⋯ Medicare cuts also impact other insurance payments, incurring a "ripple effect" such that many insurers will seek to pay at or around the Medicare rate. In this manuscript, we discuss universal healthcare systems, the CMS proposed ruling and its attendant ripple effect(s), historical aspects of the Medicare payment system, the Sustained Growth Rate system, and the potential consequences incurred by both proposed cuts and potential solutions to the discrepant cost-payment issue(s). As well, ethical issues of policy development upon the infrastructure and practice of interventional pain management are addressed.
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There has been an explosive increase in procedures performed in surgery centers, with approximately 4,700 Medicare-certified surgery centers in the United States. Total ambulatory surgical center (ASC) payments have increased substantially: $1 billion in 1996, and $2.9 billion in 2006. In June 1998, the Healthcare Financing Administration (HCFA; CMS), proposed an ASC rule in which at least 60% of interventional procedures were eliminated from ASCs and the remaining 40% faced substantial cuts in payments. ⋯ Based on the new proposed rule, most interventional pain management procedures in ASCs will lose approximately 3% to 5% without taking into account that there have not been any increments since 2004, except for a few small increases for some procedures, along with the addition of office procedures, which can now be performed in an ASC setting. However, payments for procedures moved from the office setting to ASCs remain at the lower office rates, which face substantial cuts on their own. The proposed CMS rule will have widespread effects on physician payments, ASC payments, and particularly interventional pain management physicians.