President Signs Bill Extending Medicare Physician Payment Freeze Through May 31
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the following statement this morning:
On April 15, 2010, President Obama signed into law the “Continuing Extension Act of 2010.” This law extends through May 31, 2010, the zero percent update to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule that was in effect for claims with dates of service January 1, 2010 through March 31, 2010. The law is retroactive to April 1, 2010. Consequently, effective immediately, claims with dates of service April 1 and later, which were being held by Medicare contractors, are being released for processing and payment. Please keep in mind that the statutory payment floors still apply and, therefore, clean electronic claims cannot be paid before 14 calendar days after the date they are received by Medicare contractors (29 calendar days for clean paper claims).
Knowing Medicine is Not Enough to be a Good Doctor
From Kevinmd.com/blog/2010 Feb 19, 2010
Most medical schools do a reasonably good job clinically preparing medical students to be future physicians. But they can do better, especially in our fragmented health system where millions of Americans have to contend with costs as much as they have to with their medical conditions. In her recent New York Times column, Pauline Chen cites a study showing that students exposed to more non-clinical topics, like medical economics, health policy, and the “business” of medicine, were more satisfied with their education. As the author of that study notes, “when you have hundreds of insurance plans and thousands of insurance groups and different hospitals, you have to be really smart about the health care system . . . Our findings suggest that we are not preparing them nearly as well for that challenge as we are for their clinical work.” I’ve continually noted that students are not prepared for the business of health care, which today, is as important as the medicine itself. Consequently, patients suffer as doctors are not attuned to their economic realities, such as the cost of their prescription drugs and the labyrinthine bureaucracy they have to contend with. Medical schools need to do more to prepare doctors deal with these non-clinical issues; prevalent only in our uniquely American health system.
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/02/knowing-medicine-good-doctor.html
