This program will create a financial incentive for doctors to take more interest in a patient’s follow up care, thereby, providing better care.
There are some who say that the entire medical and pharma system is based on making money and not on getting you better. I guess this proves it.
The promise of “better care for patients” apparently wasn’t enough in order to get this program off the ground…they had to both pay doctors more AND show a savings to the government.
While I applaud the program to increase follow up care, this seems to me like doctors are now going to get paid more to do what they should already be doing (and are doing in other countries).
The USA medical system is ranked 37th in the world by the World Health Organization.
35 Dominica
36 Costa Rica
37 United States of America
38 Slovenia
39 Cuba
-dg
U.S. Medicare rules seek improved care, lower costs | Reuters
A patient waits in the hallway for a room to open up in the emergency room at a hospital in Houston, Texas, July 27, 2009.
WASHINGTON | Fri Apr 1, 2011 8:41am EDT – By Donna Smith
(Reuters) – U.S. Medicare regulators on Thursday launched a program for doctors to deliver more follow-up care to patients that they predict will save the government as much as $960 million over the next three years while providing better healthcare for the elderly.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed rules under President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul setting out guidelines for doctors and hospitals who form so-called accountable care organizations to deliver Medicare services.
The idea, called coordinated care, is to give primary care physicians a financial incentive to follow up on patients who are sent to the hospital or prescribed a course of treatment.
The traditional pay for service structure provides no such incentives, which take the form of a share of any cost savings.
“We’ve known for a long time that too many Americans fail to get the best care when they walk into a hospital or a doctor’s office,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a telephone press conference.
“One in every five Medicare beneficiaries who leaves the hospital is back within 30 days. In many cases it is because they failed to receive the correct follow up care,” she added…
U.S. Medicare rules seek improved care, lower costs | Reuters.