Many people believe that physicians get paid for all of the services they provide. The reality is that physicians do much work for our patients without any reimbursement. Continued cuts in reimbursement may in the future lead physicians to charge for these free services. Some of the services for which doctors do not get paid are listed below:

• Making any phone calls. This includes:
  • Calling patient to go over labs
  • Calling patient to go over radiology results
  • Calling patient for any reason at all
  • Giving medical advice over the phone
  • Calling a family member to discuss the situation
  • Calling another doctor to discuss your case
  • Calling a laboratory to get lab results
  • Talking to a patient in the middle of the night
• Researching your disease process
• Talking to a family member when you are in the hospital
• PRIOR AUTHORIZATIONS
• PRESCRIBING ANYTHING AT ALL, including:
  • Calling a pharmacy to refill your prescription
  • Doing a prior authorization for a radiology study
  • Doing a prior authorization for a medication
  • Writing a prescription
• Getting woken up in the middle of the night to handle an outpatient issue
• Getting woken up in the middle of the night to handle a hospital patient issue
• Prescribing a particular medicine
• Prescribing a particular test
• A no-show visit by a patient
• Filling out paperwork for the patient
• Being ON-CALL
• Handling phone calls while ON-CALL
• No “overtime” – ever
• No “holiday” pay – ever
• No “emergency call” pay – ever

NOTE: Your copay is not a bonus for the doctor – you are paying the fees that your insurance company is pushing onto you – sometimes your copay is nearly 90% of what the physician receives for the visit.

Impending Medicare cuts to physician reimbursement

-----

Doctor payments account for ONLY 20% of the costs of Medicare.

• Why does the government continue to target physicians for payment reductions while they increase payments to much of the rest of the healthcare industry?

-----

Tort reform (changes to minimize malpractice awards) was NOT addressed in Obama’s healthcare bill.

• Actually, it is addressed: The bill says that any state which enacts Tort Reform will LOSE federal funding for Medicaid. This is a penalty to any state which tries to fix the out of control frivolous medical law-suits.
• Most doctors will agree that the high cost and constant threat of law-suits is a major reason many expensive medical tests and non-essential testing is performed.

-----

The AMA does NOT represent most physicians in the United States. Only approximately 25% of physicians are members of the AMA (and that includes all medical residents whom are enrolled automatically).

Medicare now requires physicians or their staff to take their time away from caring for hospitalized patients so that they can photocopy medical records for Medicare, so that Medicare can try to find ways to reduce the amount that they pay the physician for his/her work.

• Wouldn’t you think Medicare would pay their own staff to do this work so as to not compromise patient care?