Imaging Businesses Join Opposition to Deficit Reduction Act
HospitalBuyer recently reported that some hospitals and device makers resist forthcoming Medicare payment changes included in the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA). Houston Chronicle shows imaging businesses are scared by them too. The newspaper quoted Tim Petrikin, CEO of e+healthcare as saying: “This is a serious issue that will hugely impact access. Hospitals are reimbursed in a different manner and can spread costs over many service lines. Diagnostic imaging centers can’t. So it will be very difficult for them to continue to succeed and develop in new areas.”
The technical component of some physician in-office imaging services is scheduled to be reduced to the lesser of the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (HOPPS) or the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, effective next January 2007. The Congressional Budget Office estimated these cuts at $2.6 billion over five years, while some specialty societies believe they could be as much as $6 billion over five years. Moreover, doctors with stakes in nuclear medicine imaging services at outpatient clinics will have to divest themselves by the same deadline.
Medicare concerns about possible overuse and self referrals were already known last year. The US House of Representatives Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee held a hearing today on the use of imaging services. The Society of Interventional Radiology provides transcripts of the testimonies heard during the hearing, which Houston Chronicle depicted as a battle between radiologists and cardiologists.
In his testimony (pdf), Glenn M. Hackbarth, J.D. and Chairman of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) described imaging as the fastest-growing physician service for the 1999-2004 period, with MRI, nuclear medicine and CT (other than head) leading. He pointed out that “quality problems may lead to duplicative studies, inaccurate studies, missed or inaccurate diagnoses , and inappropriate treatment” and asked for Congress to enable CMS to enact standards relative to imaging equipement, staff qualifications, technical quality of the images produced, and procedures for ensuring patient safety.
Congressman Joseph Pitts (R, PA) introduced proposal H.R. 5704: Access to Medicare Imaging Act of 2006 to set a two-year moratorium on these payment reductions. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) would study their effects on access to medical imaging in the meantime. Arl Van Moore, Jr., the American College of Radiology’s Chairman of the Board since last May, expressed his support (pdf) for the delay but agreed with the idea of federal standards, citing the Mammography Quality Standards Act of 1992 (MQSA) precedent.
July 19, 2006 Related topics: Legal & legislative, Imaging