SHP Blog

More than 40,000 comments were filed on this year’s physician fee schedule, and almost none will be read by the people they matter to most. Half the arguments sit in attachments, form letters can fill a quarter of a docket, and 1,280 hospital outpatient comments named no organization at all, MedPAC’s among them. SHP Comment Intelligence reads the whole rule and the whole record. Every letter and attachment is coded against a taxonomy we build together, each position cited with a direct quote and page, then checked by someone who has written those letters. Send me the rule and the issues you care about, and I’ll tell you what the record holds, in days.

Medicare’s fee schedule is named for relativity. Nothing in it ever checks whether relativity holds. Here is an idea about how it could.

House subcommittees unite on bipartisan reform push after hearing reveals widespread insurance company abuses

This issue brief addresses the topic of global payments for surgeons under the Medicare physician fee schedule (PFS): what they are, how they work (or don’t work) and why CMS seems so intent on doing away with them.

A few weeks ago, we reported that the publication of the Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) proposed rule, and specifically CMS’s big reveal of its mandatory Transforming Episode Accountability Model (TEAM) payment proposal, would awaken some of the physician payment policy wonks from a briefer than usual slumber. These past few weeks have shown signs of life, even in some unexpected places.