Medicare program; revisions to payment policies under the Physician Fee Schedule, and other part B payment policies for CY 2008; delay of the date of applicability of the revised anti-markup provisions for certain services furnished in certain locations (Sec. 414.50). Final rule.
(33/74)
This final rule delays until January 1, 2009 the applicability of the anti-markup provisions in Sec. 414.50, as revised at 72 FR 66222, except with respect to the technical component of a purchased diagnostic test and with respect to any anatomic pathology diagnostic testing services furnished in space that: Is utilized by a physician group practice as a "centralized building" (as defined at Sec. 411.351 of this chapter) for purposes of complying with the physician self-referral rules; and does not qualify as a "same building" under Sec. 411.355(b)(2)(i) of this chapter. (+info)
The influences of Taiwan's generic grouping price policy on drug prices and expenditures: evidence from analysing the consumption of the three most-used classes of cardiovascular drugs.
(34/74)
Physician payment reform in the United States.
(39/74)
The United States recently adopted an entirely new system of paying physicians for the services they provide to elderly and disabled patients. The new system is based on a fee schedule in which the relative values among different services are derived on the basis of the cost of providing such services. To control expenditure growth, a system of Volume Performance Standards (VPSs) was adopted, which explicitly links physician fee levels to the success the physician community has in controlling the total volume of services provided. This article presents and analyzes the new payment system and examines its applicability to other countries. It concludes that the methodology used to develop the fee schedule may be useful to other countries, particularly if they are unable to reach a consensus on appropriate physician fee levels, but that the VPS system needs to be refined in a number of ways before it can be successfully exported. (+info)
Geographic variation in relative fees under Medicare.
(40/74)
Little is known about geographic variation in Medicare's relative fee structure. Using 1986 Part B Medicare claims data, ratios among physician fees for surgical procedures belonging to small families of closely related procedures, excluding outliers, were found to vary up to twofold. Under Medicare's current system of physician payment, physicians in different areas face different financial incentives for performing one procedure in preference to possible alternatives. Changes in incentives under a resource-based Medicare fee schedule will be more pervasive than previously recognized. (+info)