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Home Health & Hospice Week

Reimbursement:

Impending Physician Pay Cut Could Threaten Home Care Dollars

Published on Tue Oct 26, 2010

Medicare will cut doc payment rates by 23% in one month. Home care providers may be on shaky ground when lawmakers start looking for funding sources to finance another fix to Medicare's physician payment rates. Last June, Congress voted to not only stave off a 21 percent cut to docs' Medicare pay, but to increase their rates by 2.2 percent. However, that vote kept the cuts at bay only through Nov. 30 -- and that date is right around the corner. Effective Dec. 1, physicians' Medicare pay rate is set to drop by more than 23 percent, unless Congress intervenes to reverse the cuts. Add to that the fact that 2011 payments to docs are due to drop by another 6.5 percent starting Jan. 1, and medical practices will be putting the full court press on their elected representatives to find a reimbursement fix for them. Thanks to the November elections [...]
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