The fee cut went into effect on June 1, but CMS has postponed processing claims until Friday, as the Senate debates a 19-month fee-fix already passed by the House.
Gregory Thomas, MD, a cardiologist at Mission Internal Medical Group in Mission Viejo, Calif., said his practice has enough cash flow to handle a month’s delay in billing. But if the cut goes through, he said the practice may have to withdraw from Medicare and become a concierge service, charging patients a retainer for access to physician care.
Larry Epstein, manager of Pulmonary and Allergy Associates in Summit, N.J., said the practice would lose as much as $1 million a year if the cuts went into effect. Medicare makes up about 40 percent of the practice’s $14 million in revenue, and “there’s no way in a pulmonary practice that we could cut Medicare patients,” he said.
Jen Brull, MD, a family physician in Plainville, Kan., said when CMS withheld payments briefly in April, the last time Congress last delayed a fee fix, she saw a $10,000 drop in revenue. If the cut actually went into effect, she would work harder but wouldn’t drop out of Medicare, which accounts for 22 percent of her patients and 35-40 percent of her income.
Dr. Jason Marker, a family physician in Wyatt, Ind., said dropping Medicare patients is not an option, but the pending cuts make him nervous about paying back a loan for remodeling his office and his plans to take on a partner. He said the 21.3 percent cut would reduce his Medicare reimbursement for an office visit from $60 to $47.
Read the Kaiser Health News report on the Medicare fee cut.
