Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

The changes are well-intentioned, but experts can't explain why they're not working. The startling conclusion of a study published online this Feb. 8 in Cancer -- a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society -- indicates that increased Medicare payments to physicians for outpatient surgeries for bladder cancer might have led to a steep rise in the number of procedures performed. This resulted in Medicare expenditure for outpatient bladder surgery procedures growing by almost twofold, a rise which could not be explained by the increase in the number of bladder cancer referrals during the corresponding period alone or the degree to which cancer was treated definitively in the office, noted the authors of the study. The authors of the study compared Medicare reimbursements during 2002-2004 (Period 1) with reimbursements during 2005-2007 (Period 2) and found a 1.76-fold increase in Period 2 compared to Period 1. "Our study was not intended to be [...]