The Japanese medical care system, highly rated internationally, has recently experienced a crisis that has placed a burden on all of its citizens, providers, and payers, due to the expansion of medical expenditures in rapidly aging society with the stagnant economy. To address this, in April 2003, Japan implemented a case-mix payment system, instead of conventional fee-for-service payment, base...

When the Japanese government adopted Western medicine in the late nineteenth century, it left intact the infrastructure of primary care by giving licenses to the existing practitioners and by initially setting the hurdle for entry into medical school low. Public financing of hospitals was kept minimal so that almost all of their revenue came from patient charges. When social health insurance (S...

Physician spending is complex related to national health care spending, government regulations, health care reform, private insurers, physician practice, and patient utilization patterns. In determining payment rates for each service on the fee schedule, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) considers the amount of work required to provide a service, expenses related to maintaini...

Dates to which data relate The effectiveness data used to populate the model came from studies published between 1984 and 2003. The resource use data were derived from studies published between 1990 and 2003 and were augmented by authors' assumptions. The cost data were derived from official sources (Medicare Fee Schedule reimbursement rates) and referred to the year 2004. All costs were report...

s Abstracts of all the presentations including accepted papers will be distributed at the opening of the congress to all registered participants and will be included in the registration fee. Provisional time schedule April 1995: 2nd announcement and registrati.on October I 1995: Deadline for submitting abstracts November I 1995: Authors will be informed of acceptance of abstracts. For more info...

Customary charges have had significant impacts in determining reasonable prices under the historic Medicare physician payment system. This article contains new, comprehensive information on customary charges as well as data aggregated at the physician level. These baseline data have some important policy implications, such as the study findings, that indicate that the Medicare fee schedule is l...