On Nov. 1, CMS finalized a 2.83% cut to its 2025 physician payment rule, marking another year of declining reimbursements.
Cardiovascular physicians joined TCT MD to discuss the impact of the reimbursement cut on cardiologists in a Dec. 9 report.
Here are four takeaways from the report:
1. Cathleen Biga, MSN, of Cardiovascular Management of Illinois in Woodridge, likened the decrease in pay to "death by a thousand cuts."
"Unlike any of our other colleagues within the healthcare economic system who always get increases, the physician schedule just continues to get hammered," she said. "And yet our costs are very similar to our hospital colleagues: labor costs, postpandemic supply costs, real estate costs; and the complexity of our patients within the outpatient ambulatory setting just continue to escalate."
2. Another physician, Arnold Seto, MD, of Long Beach (Calif.) VA Medical Center, added that inflation is often taken into account when calculating payments for other sites of service in healthcare, the same is not true for physicians.
"Ultimately, doctors have been hurt by 20 years of reimbursements failing to keep up with inflation and now with office expenses increasing significantly, we're at the limit of tolerance," Dr. Seto said. "If we want Medicare patients to have access to high-quality care, permanent Medicare physician-fee-schedule reform is needed."
3. The report notes that site neutrality has been gaining traction as a way to increase parity between payments to hospitals and ASCs, as well as other sites of service.
"Site neutrality isn't just about imaging; it has to do with drugs, infusions, and all kinds of different things," Dr. Biga said. "I think it's critical that we continue to educate our physicians on site neutrality and what that really means."
4. Another possible policy change comes in the form of the "Medicare Patient Access and Standard Practice Stabilization Act of 2024," according to the report. The bill was introduced by Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.), but some are skeptical that these measures could be too short-term.
"The short-term relief that the House and Senate are considering is obviously essential," said Joseph Cleveland, MD, of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center in Aurora. "What I would look forward to in 2025 is: let's stop talking about these short-term patches, and let's come up with a viable, long-term solution for physician reimbursement that will continue the access for patients and the stability of medical practices so that we can basically do what we're trained to do, which is take care of patients with the No. 1 killer, cardiovascular disease, in the United States."