Medicare Fee Cuts and Cardiologist-Hospital Integration

Analysis of Hospital Readmission Patterns in Medicare Fee-for-Service and Medicare Advantage Beneficiaries.

PURPOSE OF STUDY The study was conducted to examine the hospital readmission patterns of two groups of Medicare beneficiaries-those covered by traditional Medicare (Medicare fee-for-service [FFS]) and those enrolled in a Medicare risk plan (Medicare Advantage [MA])-and to determine the characteristics that significantly increase the likelihood of multiple hospital readmissions. PRIMARY PRACTI...

Medicare Fee-for-Service Issues and Innovations

This issue focuses on selected developments in the Medicare fee-for-service program. Two of the articles provide new estimates of the effect of Medicare supplemental insurance on total Medicare utilization and costs: One addresses utilization differences under alternative forms of supplemental insurance, and the other reports on utilization experience under the Medicare SELECT Demonstration. Tw...

Preparing for a medicare fee cut.

at the time this article went to press, the federal government was still trying to figure out what, if anything, to do about a 10.6 percent Medicare fee cut scheduled to go into effect for physician services beginning on July 1, with an additional cut scheduled for Jan. 1. As with past years, a number of proposals have been developed to block the fee cut, but there’s no guarantee that the cut w...

Impact of the Medicare physician fee schedule.

Realigning incentives in fee-for-service Medicare.

This paper proposes Medicare payment reform built on the fee-for-service system, with incentive payments to eligible provider organizations determined by their rate of increase in cost per patient compared to the overall growth rate in the community. By planning and monitoring how care patterns are altered to achieve greater efficiency, policy-makers can align the incentives of Medicare and the...