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Paying more and getting less: As hospital chains grow, local services shrink

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Paying more and getting less: As hospital chains grow, local services shrink

When most hospitals close, it’s plain to see. Equipment and fixtures are hauled out and carted away. Doctors and nurses leave and buildings are shuttered, maybe demolished.

But another fate befalling U.S. hospitals is almost invisible. Across the country, conglomerates that control an increasing share of the market are changing their business models, consolidating services in one regional “hub” hospital and cutting them from others.

In recent years, hospitals across the country have seen their entire inpatient departments closed — no patients staying the night, no nursery, no place for the sickest of the sick to recover. These facilities become, in essence, outpatient clinics.

Hospital executives see these cuts as sound business decisions, and say they are the inevitable consequence of changes in how people are using medical services. But to patients and local leaders who joined forces with these larger health networks just years ago, they feel more like broken promises: Not only are they losing convenient access to care, their local hospitals are also getting drained of revenue and jobs that sustain their communities.

“It’s not even just betrayal. It’s disgust, frankly,” said Mariah Lynne, a resident of Albert Lea, Minn., where Mayo Clinic is removing most inpatient care and the birthing unit from one of its hospitals. “Never would I have expected a brand of this caliber to be so callous.”

In 2015, the most recent year of data, these service reductions accounted for nearly half of the hospital closures recorded around the country, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. (By MedPac’s definition, the loss of inpatient wards is equivalent to closure.) These data do not capture more discreet closures of surgical and maternity units that are also happening at local hospitals.

And the trend doesn’t just affect nearby residents. It represents a slow-moving but seismic shift in the idea of the community hospital — the place down the street where you could go at any hour, and for any need. Does the need for that hospital still exist, or is it a nostalgic holdover? And if it is still needed, is it economically viable?

The eye of the storm

The effort to scale back inpatient care is occurring within some of the nation’s most prestigious nonprofit hospitals.

Mayo Clinic announced last summer that it would cease almost all inpatient care at its hospital in Albert Lea. The health network said it would keep the emergency department open, but send most other patients to Austin, 23 miles east.

In Massachusetts, sprawling Partners HealthCare said it will shut the only hospitalin Lynn, a city of 92,000 people near Boston, and instead direct patients to its hospital in neighboring Salem. Only urgent care and outpatient services will remain in Lynn.

And in Ohio, Cleveland Clinic has made similar moves. In 2016, it closed its hospital in Lakewood, a densely packed Cleveland suburb. It is replacing the hospital with a family health center and emergency department.

The cuts follow a period of rapid consolidation in the health care industry. Of the 1,412 hospital mergers in the U.S. between 1998 and 2015, nearly 40 percent occurred after 2009, according to data published recently in the journal Health Affairs.

As large providers have expanded their networks, they have also gained inpatient beds that are no longer in demand — thanks to improved surgical techniques and other improvements that are shortening hospital stays. Hence the closures.

But the hollowing-out of historic community hospitals has surfaced fundamental tensions between providers and the cities and towns they serve. Residents are voicing frustration with large health networks that build expensive downtown campuses, charge the highest prices, and then cut services in outlying communities they deem unprofitable.

Health scholars also note a growing dissonance between the nonprofit status of these hospitals and their increasing market power. While the nonprofits continue to claim tens of millions of dollars a year in tax breaks to serve the sick and vulnerable, some are functioning more like monopolies with the clout to shift prices and services however they wish.

“These providers say they are worth the high price and that in the American system, if you have a reputation for excellence, you deserve higher fees,” said Dr. Robert Berenson, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. “My response to that would be, if we had a well-functioning market, that might make some sense. But we don’t.”

Changing demand among patients

The financial upheaval in community hospitals is driven by sweeping changes in the delivery of care. Procedures and conditions that once required lengthy hospitalizations now require only outpatient visits.

At Mayo Clinic, Dr. Annie Sadosty knows this evolution well because it roughly traces her career. She uses appendectomies as an example. Twenty-five years ago, when she was in medical school, the procedure was performed through a 5-inch incision and resulted in a weeklong hospitalization.

Today, the same procedure is done laparoscopically, through a much smaller incision, resulting in a recovery time of about 24 hours. “Some people don’t even stay in the hospital,” Sadosty said.

Something similar could be said for a wide range of medical procedures and services — from knee replacements to the removal of prostate glands in cancer patients. Hospital stays are either being eliminated or reduced to one or two days. And patients who were once routinely admitted for conditions like pneumonia are now sent home and managed remotely.

“Hospitals that used to be full of patients with common problems are no longer as full,” said Sadosty, an emergency medicine physician at Mayo and regional vice president of operations. “It’s been a breakneck pace of innovation and change that has led to a necessary evolution in the way that we care for people.”

That evolution has cratered demand for inpatient beds. In 2017, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission noted that hospital occupancy is hovering around 62 percent, though the number of empty beds varies from region to region.

In Albert Lea, Mayo administrators said the changes at the hospital will only impact about seven inpatients a day. Currently, caring for those patients requires nursing staff, hospitalists, and other caregivers, not to mention overhead associated with operating a hospital around the clock. The financial result is predictable: Hospital executives reported that jointly Albert Lea and Austin hospitals have racked up $13 million in losses over the last two years.

With inpatient demand declining, hospital administrators decided to consolidate operations in Austin. The decision meant the removal of Albert Lea’s intensive care unit, inpatient surgeries, and the labor and delivery unit. Behavioral health services will be consolidated in Albert Lea.

Cleveland Clinic described similar pressures. Dr. J. Stephen Jones, president of the clinic’s regional hospital and family health centers, said use of inpatient beds has declined rapidly in Lakewood, dropping between 5 and 8 percent a year over the last decade. By 2015, 94 percent of visits were for outpatient services — a change that was undermining financial performance. The hospital lost about $46.5 million on operations that year, according to the clinic’s financial statements, and its aging infrastructure was in need of repair.

“Hospitals are very expensive places to run,” Jones said. “Lakewood was losing money on an operating basis for at least five years” before this decision was made.

Closures spark fierce protests

But the service cuts in Albert Lea, Lynn, and Lakewood — backed by nearly identical narratives from hospital executives — provoked the same reaction from the communities surrounding them.

Outrage.

Residents accused the hospital chains of putting their bottom lines above the needs of patients. Even if these individual hospitals were losing money, they said, nonprofits have an overriding mission to serve their communities.

“Why is profit such a priority, and more of a priority than the Hippocratic oath?” said Kevin Young, a spokesman for Save Lakewood Hospital, a group formed to oppose Cleveland Clinic’s removal of inpatient services. “Why are we allowing this to happen?”

The fight over Lakewood Hospital has persisted for more than three years, spawning lawsuits, an unsuccessful ballot referendum to keep the hospital open, and even a complaint filed by a former congressman to the Federal Trade Commission. None has caused Cleveland Clinic to reverse course.

Meanwhile, in Albert Lea, opponents to the service cuts have taken matters into their own hands: With Mayo refusing to back down, they are hunting to bring in a competitor.

A market analysis commissioned by Albert Lea’s Save Our Hospital group concluded that a full-service hospital could thrive in the community. The report included several caveats: A new provider would need to attract new physicians and capture market share from Mayo, a tall order in a region where Mayo is the dominant provider.

But members of the group said the findings directly contradict Mayo’s explanations to the community. They argue that, far from financially strained, the health system is simply trying to increase margins by shifting more money and services away from poorer rural communities.

“They don’t care what happens in Albert Lea,” said Jerry Collins, a member of the group. “Mayo cares what happens with its destination medical center.” He was referring to Mayo’s $6 billion project — funded with $585 million in taxpayer dollars — to expand its downtown Rochester campus and redevelop much of the property around it.

Sensitivity to Mayo’s service reductions is heightened by its control of the market in Southeastern Minnesota. It is by far the largest provider in the region and charges higher prices than facilities in other parts of the state. A colonoscopy at Mayo’s hospital in Albert Lea costs $1,595, compared to $409 at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, according to Minnesota HealthScores, a nonprofit that tracks prices. The gap is even bigger for a back MRI: $3,000 in Albert Lea versus $589 at Allina Health Clinics in Minneapolis.

“All of Southeast Minnesota is feeling the domination of one large corporation,” said Al Arends, who chairs fundraising for Save Our Hospital. “They are ignoring the economic impact on the community and on the health care for patients.”

The community’s loud resistance has drawn the attention of the state’s attorney general and governor, as well as U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, who has begun a series of “facilitated dialogues” between Mayo and its opponents in Albert Lea.

So far, the dialogue has failed to forge a compromise. Mayo is proceeding with its plans. It has relocated the hospital’s intensive care unit to Austin, and inpatient surgeries and labor and delivery services are planned to follow.

Mayo executives reject the notion that they are abandoning Albert Lea or compromising services. The hospital plans to renovate the Albert Lea cancer wing and beef up outpatient care, improvements executives say have gotten lost amid the criticism.

As for inpatient care, they say, Mayo must consider quality and safety issues. With the hospital in Albert Lea only admitting a handful of patients a day, caregivers’ skills are likely to diminish, potentially undermining quality. They also cited recruiting challenges.

“It’s difficult to outfit both [Albert Lea and Austin] hospitals with all the incumbent equipment, expertise, multidisciplinary teams, and nursing staff,” vice president Sadosty said. “This is one way we can preserve and elevate care, and do it in an affordable way so our patients have access to high-quality care as close to their homes as possible.”

A strained system

Efforts to regionalize medical services also pose a new challenge: Can hospitals transport patients fast enough — and coordinate their care well enough — to ensure that no one falls through the cracks?

It is a question that will face stroke victims and expectant mothers who now must drive greater distances, sometimes in treacherous conditions, to make it to the hospital on time.

In Massachusetts, Partners HealthCare will face that test as it moves inpatient and emergency care from Union Hospital in Lynn to North Shore Medical Center in Salem. The hospitals are less than 6 miles apart. However, the short distance belies the difficulty of coordinating service across it.

Ambulances will have fewer options in emergencies. And if residents drive themselves to the wrong place in a panic, precious time gets wasted.

Dr. David Roberts, president of North Shore Medical Center, said the health system is working to educate patients to ensure that they go to the correct facility. He added that Partners already conducts risk assessments of patients with severe medical problems, and transfers them to hospitals with higher-level care when necessary.

In cases of suspected stroke, Roberts said, Partners employs a telemedicine program in which patients who arrive in its emergency rooms are examined by physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “They instantly, based on imaging, can decide which patient might benefit from having a clot pulled out of an artery in their head,” Roberts said. “They can say, ‘Yeah, this patient needs to be in our radiology suite in the next 30 minutes, and they make that happen.”

Still, opponents of the closure say it raises a broader concern about whether Partners’s actions are driven by a financial strategy to shift care away from low-income communities with higher concentrations of uninsured patients and those on Medicaid, which pays less for hospital services than commercial insurers. Union Hospital serves a largely low-income population.

“Why don’t we see these cuts across the Partners system? Why are we only seeing it in Lynn?” said Dianne Hills, a member of the Lynn Health Task Force. “Are we moving into a world where you have two systems of care — one for the poor and the old, and another for the affluent?”

Roberts said the consolidation at North Shore Medical Center in Salem has nothing to do with the income level of population in Lynn. He said the hospitals serve “identical” mixes of patients with government and commercial insurances.

“Our payer mix at both hospitals is adverse,” he said. “And despite that, Partners invested $208 million” to support the expansion of North Shore Medical Center.

Roberts acknowledged that the closure of the hospital in Lynn will have a negative impact on the city’s economy. But he said construction of a $24 million outpatient complex will mitigate some of that damage. The facility is expected to open in 2019. “It doesn’t take away the sting of losing a hospital,” Roberts said. “I’m hoping the [new] building goes a long way. We’re going to grow it as a vibrant medical village.”

Meanwhile, Mayo is proceeding with its changes in Albert Lea. Executives have assured Albert Lea residents that they will receive the same level of care for emergency services and upgraded facilities for outpatient care.

But some community members said they are already noticing problems with Mayo’s regionalization. One local pharmacist, Curt Clarambeau, said he can’t get timely responses to reports of adverse drug reactions. A call to the hospital in Albert Lea results in several phone transfers and no immediate response.

“It’s just impossible. It takes days,” Clarambeau said. “They’re trying to create efficiencies by not having everyone calling the doctors, but there are certain things we need to talk to them about.”

Don Sorensen, 79, said he’s also had trouble getting access to doctors at the hospital in Albert Lea. He said began to suffer from severe knee pain in November, but couldn’t get an appointment. His wife was put on hold for 40 minutes before learning the earliest appointment was still several days away.

At the suggestion of his RV repairman, Sorensen called a clinic in Minneapolis and got an appointment the same day. His wife, Eleanor, drove him, and he ended up with a brace, a prescription, and another follow up appointment.

But the couple is worried about continuing to make the drive if the logjam persists in Albert Lea. “We used to feel secure because we had Mayo here,” Eleanor Sorensen said. “We could get the care we needed. But now everybody our age feels very very vulnerable.”

 

 

MedPAC votes 14-2 to junk MIPS, providers angered

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http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20180111/NEWS/180119963

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The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission voted 14-2 to repeal and replace a Medicare payment system that aims to improve the quality of patient care. Providers immediately slammed the move.

To avoid penalties under MACRA, physicians must follow one of two payment tracks: the Merit-based Incentive Payment System, or MIPS, or advanced alternative payment models like accountable care organizations.

On Thursday, the Commission voted to asks Congress to eliminate MIPS and establish a new voluntary value program in which clinicians join a group and are compared to each other on the quality of care for patients. Physicians who perform well would receive an incentive payment. The suggestion will be published in the advisory group’s annual March report to Congress.

MedPAC wants to junk MIPS because it believes the system is too burdensomefor physicians and won’t push them to improve care. Members have criticized the program’s design for primarily measuring how doctors perform, including whether they ordered appropriate tests or followed general clinical guidelines, rather than if patient care was ultimately improved by that provider’s actions.

The CMS estimates that up to 418,000 physicians will be submitting 2017 MIPS data.

Prior to the vote, the majority of the debate centered on whether or not MedPac had developed an adequate replacement for MIPS.

David Nerenz, one of the no votes, said he was against the replacement because he worried that only providers with healthy patients would ban together, while those with high risk patients would face difficulty finding anyone to partner with.

He also said evidence was lacking that the group reporting approach would be an effective way to hold providers accountable for quality.

Dr. Alice Coombs, a commissioner and critical-care specialist at Milton Hospital and South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Mass., was the other no vote. She said she was against getting rid of MIPS as providers are just now getting used to it. Those concerns increased when MedPac staff noted that MIPS repeal likely wouldn’t take place until 2019 or 2020 depending when or if Congress accepted its recommendation.

Warner Thomas, a commissioner and CEO of the Ochsner Health System in New Orleans, LA voted yes, but said he did so with some trepidation as MedPac had not received comments from industry that they were supportive of what the Commission was doing in terms of repealing and replacing MIPS.

“There hasn’t been any support from the physician community around this, and we should be cautioned by that fact,” Thomas said.

Clinicians and providers criticized MedPac following the vote.

“I think they’re wrong,” Dr. Stephen Epstein, an emergency physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston said in a tweet. “MIPS could change practice patterns by aligning incentives with performance measures.”

The Medical Group Management Association said it did not support the Commission’s suggestion for a replacement to MIPS.

“It would conscript physician groups into virtual groups and evaluate them on broad claims-based measures which is inconsistent with the congressional intent in MACRA to put physicians in the driver seat of Medicare’s transition from volume to value,” Anders Gilberg, senior vice president of government affairs at MGMA said in a statement.

 

Uwe Reinhardt: Giant, mensch, knife twister

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Uwe Reinhardt: Giant, mensch, knife twister

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The renowned Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt died today. The email from his Dean at the Woodrow Wilson school said he passed peacefully and surrounded by family.

Reactions on Twitter resonate with my own. They reflect Uwe’s contributions to and presence in health care policy and education — “insightful, “a treasure,” focused on the “moral underpinnings of policy,” “one of the nicest and funniest people in the field of health econ,” “a godfather of health policy and economics,” “a unique and disarmingly powerful voice in health policy,” a “world-class mensch,” “a gifted teacher and inspiring leader,” one of the “most acerbic speakers in Health Care over the last 20+ years. Never afraid to speak truth to power,” “engaging and understandable,” “a giant.”

I once called him “the narrator of U.S. health care policy.” Any journalist who could get hold of him for a health care story was sure to get pure gold. His wit and precision were evident in his spoken and written word. His command of English was tremendous. His ability to explain to lay audiences, legendary. If you’re unfamiliar, go read anything he wrote for The New York Times Economix blog, where he posted regularly for years. He can teach. You will learn.

Born and raised in Germany, he did it all in a second language. Of this, he reminded audiences regularly. The title of one of his presentations was, “Still Confused, After 40 Years in America!” Don’t believe it. Uwe was always the least confused person in the room.

He opened many speeches with, “I’m just an immigrant so maybe I am missing something about the curious American health care system” (or similar). I heard it many times. It never got old, particularly because I knew what was coming next. Just after such an opening, he would reveal some peculiarity of the health system I had never noticed in the same way. And then he proceeded to show how it was illogical, in violation of basic concepts of economics, immoral, or hypocritical.

He was a knife twister of the first class. Should you hold dearly an idea he targeted for systematic dismantling, you would squirm. If only I could write half as well or think one-third as clearly.

He touched so many lives and careers, including my own.

My first engagement with Uwe was in 2009, over one of his Economix posts. In the comments to that post, I asked him for an economics argument in favor of a public option. He was kind enough to respond at length directly to my inquiry in a follow-up Economix post. I was thrilled, even as I took a beating. I documented the encounter on this blog.

Perhaps due to my repeated blog-based engagement with him — like a fly that just won’t go away — Uwe took some interest in what I was doing on TIE. He noticed my many posts on hospital cost shifting and suggested that an updated literature review should be published. I counter-offered that we do it together, and he accepted.

I knew exactly what this meant. I was to write the first draft and he would serve as senior author and tell me how much more work it needed. Here’s where Uwe surprised me and earned my deepest respect. His response to my first draft was that it was so good he did not think it right that his name appear on it. Instead, I should publish it solo, with his support. This is good mentorship. It was my first solo-authored paper and is my most cited publication.

I met Uwe in person only once, in Princeton in 2010. I was there to visit my parents and give a talk at the Woodrow Wilson School. Learning I’d be in town, he invited me to lunch. I thought it was just going to be the two of us, but he insisted I bring my parents too — his treat. (In advance of the lunch, with some help from YouTube, I practiced how to pronounce his name. It’s “oo-va” not “you-ee.”)

Though I never saw him again in person, for years I encountered him over email. Usually our threads began with me asking a question or him sharing one of his lengthy emails to some other scholar or policymaker. (Oh, what a shame it is he didn’t post those emails for all to see. They were gems.) But frequently he would email out of the blue to inquire about my family. He took an interest in hearing what my children were up to and used that as an opportunity to remind me how different parenting or childhood was in his day.

“Child rearing is so different nowadays,” he wrote me once. “When we were little, we left the house after lunch and came home for supper, roaming the country side in the meantime (and playing with live ammunition [left over from WW II]).” I have very few folders of saved emails, but this one and others of his I filed away, not to be deleted.

Frequently, in the email back-and-forth that ensued he would type out some amazing story of past hijinks. Here’s one:

Once, at a Duke University private sector conference, the entire brass of the AMA happened to be there. It was my turn at the podium and I could not resist the following stunt.

The late James Sammons, then head of the AMA, had given interview in which he said Congress had carved Medicare to death like a turkey. I showed a slide of that quote which happened to have his picture next to it. I then showed data according to which between 1980 and 1988 constant-dollar Medicare spending on physician services per beneficiary rose 83%. Apologizing for this low number on behalf of taxpayers (the growth of 83% real allegedly did not permit physicians to give the elderly adequate care), I asked the AMA people: “What increase would have been adequate in your view?” So I counted out numbers (on a slide) like an auctioneer – 100%, 120% , …– but never got any takers. After +160% I left a blank spot and said: “Evidently 160% would not do it, so you give me the number. Is it 300%?” Icy silence. I then had a slide quoting country-music singer Conway Twitty or whoever it was from his song: “I need more of you (moolah) – more, anything less would not do.”

I then I ended saying that Karen Davis and I, both then serving on the PPRC (now Medpac) would propose a budget for Medicare physician payment (the VPS), because the docs would not come to the table with a reasonable number.

For a while I literally was banned at the AMA; but later I ended up on the JAMA board.

With tales like this, I thought of him as the Richard Feynman of health policy — brilliant in his field but with an appetite for adventure and practical jokes. I encouraged him many times to write up stories like these in a book, interwoven with health policy analysis or history. Sadly, he never did. Though he took pride in his past escapades, perhaps he saw himself differently late in his career.

“When I was younger I was more brash,” Uwe wrote me. “Now I’ve mellowed.”

There are many giants in academia, and many in health care. But there are none I know like Uwe.

Health Economist Uwe Reinhardt Dies

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https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/healthpolicy/69273?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2017-11-15&eun=g885344d0r&pos=0&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%202017-11-15&utm_term=Daily%20Headlines%20-%20Active%20User%20-%20180%20days

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Frequent critic of the U.S. healthcare system.

Famed health economist Uwe Reinhardt, PhD, has died, according to media reports.

Reinhardt, 80, was a professor of political economy at Princeton, specializing in healthcare spending, hospital prices, and comparative health systems. He was a regular contributor to major medical and health policy journals, including JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine as well as Health Affairs

Reinhardt was born in Germany but emigrated to Canada and received a Bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Saskatchewan; he was awarded a PhD in economics from Yale University in 1970 and began teaching at Princeton that same year. His doctoral dissertation, which discussed the economics of physician practices, included a list of acknowledgements featuring Reinhardt’s typical wry humor: “One of the inevitable byproducts of a dissertation is that the author’s friends are drawn into the topic far more deeply than they might wish. Among my friends who suffered this fate are … ”

He also was a frequent critic of the American healthcare system, once observing that “If you want to guarantee access to care, always wear Gucci loafers. No ER turns away someone wearing Gucci loafers.” Reinhardt told Modern Healthcare in 2016 that Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) proposal for a Medicare-for-all single-payer system would be “dead on arrival in Congress” because “[p]olitically, you cannot legislate what rationally makes perfect sense.”

Reinhardt served on the Physician Payment Review Commission (a precursor to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission) and was a member of what is now the National Academy of Medicine. He was also a member of the Kaiser Family Foundation Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured and a past president of the Association of Health Services Research.

Reinhardt was married to Tsung-mei (May) Cheng, a health policy researcher and co-founder of the annual Princeton Conference on health policy; they had three children.

CMS Cut to Outpatient Drugs Will Hit Some 340B Hospitals Hard

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The 340B program is intended to help safety net hospitals, but some others have taken advantage. A lack of transparency and accounting led to deep cuts for all participants.

Hospitals receiving drug discounts will take a big financial hit in January when the federal government sharply reduces the Medicare payment for outpatient drugs, effectively cutting a subsidy that some hospitals use to provide needed medications to those who cannot afford them.

The affected hospitals are bracing for a significant drain on their bottom lines, and some serve the neediest populations. However, some other hospitals have used the program to increase profits rather than to help underserved populations.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released a final Medicare Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) ruleNovember 1 that cuts Medicare reimbursement for separately payable outpatient drugs purchased by hospitals under the 340B program, which helps certain hospitals and other healthcare entities pay for covered outpatient drugs. The 340B program requires pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs to these hospitals at a discount, but CMS reimburses the hospitals as if there were no discount.

CMS will cut the reimbursement rate from the current average sales price (ASP) plus 6% to ASP minus 22.5%, starting January 1, 2018.

CMS estimates that the change will result in a $1.6 billion reduction in OPPS payments to 340B hospitals for separately payable drugs. The new reimbursement rate was derived from a May 2015 Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) Report to Congress, which estimated that the ASP minus 22.5% rate was the “lower bound of the average discount” on drugs paid under the Medicare OPPS. However,MedPAC’s March 2016 Report to Congress recommended a less drastic reduction in payment to ASP minus 10%. Under that rate, most 340B hospitals could still see a financial benefit from the program.

Instead, the adopted rate will negatively affect all 340B hospitals, says Keely Macmillan, general manager of bundled payments for care improvement with Archway Health, a Boston-based firm that works with providers to manage bundled payments.

No Limit: Medicare Part D Enrollees Exposed to High Out-of-Pocket Drug Costs Without a Hard Cap on Spending

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No Limit: Medicare Part D Enrollees Exposed to High Out-of-Pocket Drug Costs Without a Hard Cap on Spending – Issue Brief

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Introduction

Prescription drugs play an important role in medical care for 59 million seniors and people with disabilities.  Medicare beneficiaries have access to outpatient prescription drug coverage through the Part D prescription drug benefit, which is administered by private stand-alone prescription drug plans (PDPs) and Medicare Advantage drug plans (MA-PDs). Since the start of the Medicare Part D program in 2006, the drug benefit has helped to lower out-of-pocket drug spending for all enrollees. Beneficiaries in Part D plans with low incomes and modest assets are eligible for additional assistance with plan premiums and cost sharing through the Low-Income Subsidy (LIS) program, reducing out-of-pocket costs even further for this population.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) establishes guidelines that all Part D plans must follow for the design of the drug benefit and the value of coverage that must be offered. Plans are allowed to vary, however, along dimensions that affect beneficiaries’ access to and costs for medications, including which drugs are covered and cost-sharing requirements. The standard Part D benefit in 2017 includes a deductible ($400), followed by 25 percent coinsurance for prescriptions up to an initial coverage limit ($3,700 in total costs), and then a coverage gap where enrollees without low-income subsidies pay a larger share of their drug costs until their out-of-pocket drug spending exceeds a catastrophic coverage threshold ($4,950). The Affordable Care Act (ACA) included a provision to phase out the Part D coverage gap by requiring plans to cover a growing share of total drug costs and providing a manufacturer price discount of 50 percent for brand-name drugs filled in the gap, with the amount of the manufacturer discount counting towards the out-of-pocket threshold that triggers catastrophic coverage. Once enrollees’ drug spending reaches the catastrophic threshold, those without the LIS pay up to 5 percent of their total drug costs; those who qualify for the full low-income subsidy pay nothing for their drugs in this phase of the benefit. Plans typically place drugs that cost over $670 per month on a specialty drug tier, with coinsurance that ranges from 25 percent to 33 percent.

Concern has been rising in recent years about the growing cost burden on Medicare and beneficiaries posed by new, unique, and expensive specialty drugs used to treat a range of diseases. The Medicare Boards of Trusteesand the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission have documented this rising cost burden on the Medicare program, which is reflected in higher Part D program spending overall, as well as higher spending for reinsurance of high-cost Part D enrollees who reach the catastrophic coverage phase of the benefit, where Medicare pays for 80 percent of drug costs. Although Part D provides coverage of catastrophic drug expenses, enrollees who do not receive the LIS are still responsible for up to 5 percent of their drug costs in this phase of the benefit. For very high-priced medications, this relatively small coinsurance rate can translate to a significant amount of out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries who do not receive low-income subsidies.

This analysis examines the out-of-pocket prescription drug cost burden for Medicare beneficiaries in Part D plans who do not receive low-income subsidies, focusing on those enrollees who have drug costs that exceed the catastrophic coverage threshold. We refer to this group as Part D enrollees with high out-of-pocket drug costs. Although these enrollees do not comprise the entire group of enrollees who have high total drug spending that exceeds the catastrophic coverage threshold, they are exposed to a potentially large cost burden because they do not receive the financial protection of the low-income subsidies. We analyze Medicare prescription drug event claims data for 2015, the most recent year of publicly available Medicare claims data, and trends since 2007, the first full year of the Part D drug benefit. For detail on the data and methods, see the Methodology.

Discussion

In recent years, the high and rising cost of prescription drugs has emerged as a pressing issue for consumers, public programs, and private insurers. As our analysis shows, Medicare beneficiaries who do not receive the additional financial protection provided by low-income subsidies are not insulated from this cost burden and can incur substantial out-of-pocket costs for their medications. We find that one million Medicare beneficiaries in Part D plans who were not receiving low-income subsidies had high out-of-pocket costs in 2015—that is, drug spending above the catastrophic coverage threshold—and their annual out-of-pocket spending averaged over $3,000 in 2015.

Our analysis indicates that out-of-pocket costs above the catastrophic threshold represent a growing concern for people with Medicare, and both MedPAC and Medicare’s actuaries have shown that rising spending for catastrophic coverage has placed greater fiscal pressure on Medicare. Our analysis also shows that the number of Part D enrollees who did not receive low-income subsidies and had out-of-pocket spending above the catastrophic threshold has increased over time. Looking to the future, we would expect to see continued increases in the number of enrollees reaching the catastrophic coverage threshold in 2016 and later years, due in part to the ACA changes to the coverage gap as well as the greater availability and use of high-priced drugs. These trends have cost implications both for beneficiaries and, as the Medicare actuaries have projected, for Medicare.

Part D enrollees with high out-of-pocket costs in 2015 spent an average of $1,215 out of pocket on their prescriptions filled above the catastrophic threshold, or $1.2 billion in the aggregate. In other words, Part D enrollees would have collectively saved $1.2 billion if Part D had a hard cap on out-of-pocket spending, rather than requiring enrollees to pay up to 5 percent coinsurance in the catastrophic coverage phase. Placing a hard cap on out-of-pocket spending under Part D would save money for enrollees, but would increase costs to Medicare and would not address underlying concerns related to high-priced drugs.

While Part D has helped make drugs more affordable for people with Medicare, and the ACA has provided additional relief to enrollees with high drug costs by gradually closing the coverage gap, the absence of an annual out-of-pocket spending limit under Part D exposes enrollees to significant costs—unless their incomes and assets are low enough to qualify for low-income subsidies. Various proposals to reduce drug costs—including allowing the federal government to negotiate prices for Medicare beneficiaries, and allowing Americans to import drugs from Canada and other countries—enjoy broad, bipartisan public support. With a growing number of people on Medicare facing high out-of-pocket drug costs, alleviating this burden remains an issue for federal policymakers to address.

Site-neutral payments called an assault on the financial stability of hospitals

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To integrate care, provide more services and stay competitive, hospitals are still building outpatient facilities.

Site-neutral payments all but stopped hospitals from building outpatient facilities in 2016.

Outpatient development effectively froze in 2016, down from $19.6 million in projects in 2015, to $16.4 million in 2016, according to Revista, a resource for healthcare property data.

Historically, hospital-owned outpatient centers received significantly higher reimbursement than private physician offices or ambulatory surgical centers performing the same procedures.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission recommended closing the gap between the rates. There was also concern that hospitals were buying up physician practices to take advantage of the higher reimbursement rate.

Congress enacted the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, putting site-neutral payments into effect.

New outpatient facilities that used to be paid on the outpatient prospective payment system are now reimbursed by Medicare on the physician fee schedule. The estimate on savings to Medicare runs into the billions.

Those hospitals that had new off-campus departments and began billing before Nov. 2, 2015, were still reimbursed at the higher outpatient rate. Outpatient facilities built later than the cut-off date are now paid under the less lucrative physician fee schedule.

The result of the legislation that went into effect on January 1, was to effectively freeze the geographic footprint of hospitals that rely heavily on Medicare reimbursement, according to Larry Vernaglia, an attorney and chairman of Foley & Lardner’s healthcare practice group in Boston.

For some hospitals, Medicare represents half of their operating revenue.

“It’s one more assault on the financial stability of hospitals,” Vernaglia said. “It definitely means the economics of outpatient services are dramatically different now. Hospitals have to work twice as hard to structure their outpatient buildings to get proper reimbursement.”

While some experts predicted a continued freeze in outpatient building, a surprising thing happened in 2017. The amount of outpatient projects soared to $22.9 million, the highest it has been in four years, according to Revista. However, that could be driven by the latest way skirt site-neutral rules.

“There was a big jump in 2017, that may come down a little bit,” said Revista principle Hilda Martin. “There was a sudden hold-off while systems wrapped their head around (the new policy). It is coming back. I’m wondering if this is beginning of a new trend, because so much inventory is starting this year.”

Martin said Revista is still analyzing the building boom, especially the new focus on micro-hospitals.

There’s been a significant uptick in micro-hospital development, she said. At medical real estate conferences, micro-hospitals are the hot topic because they offer a way to circle around the change in reimbursement, Martin said.

Also, the outpatient slowdown in 2016 may reflect in pause as providers submitted applications to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to show they were far enough along in planning to get an exemption and remain on the outpatient prospective payment system.

The 21st Century Cures Act provided exemptions. Hospitals in the middle of building an off-site facility could submit an application under the mid-build requirement by Feb. 13.

Many hospitals submitted mid-build applications before the deadline, including 40 in New York, seven in Massachusetts and five in Maine, Vernaglia said.

Applications are still being reviewed, and CMS did not respond to a request for information on the total number of submitted requests, or the names of the applicants.

“I’m familiar with at least 86 of them,” said Vernaglia, who also did not give specific information.

Exemptions allow hospitals to build new outpatient settings on-campus and be reimbursed at the outpatient rate.

“You’re going to see hub and spoke arrangements,” Vernaglia predicted of facility design.

Hospitals can also can build an emergency facility and still receive the higher reimbursement.

In a proposed 2017 payment rule, CMS originally required off-campus provider-based sites to offer the same services they did on Nov. 2, 2015, in order to be excluded from the site-neutral payment provisions, but opted not to include that requirement in the final rule.

For 2017, CMS finalized a Medicare physician fee schedule policy to pay non-excepted, off-campus provider-based departments at 50 percent of the outpatient rate for most services. For 2018, CMS proposed to reduce those payments further, by 25 percent.

Site neutrality creates hardships for hospitals trying to provide more services, integrate care and stay competitive in regions where patients have numerous choices for healthcare.

“There is quite a bit of cynicism in Congress and others that led to passage of Section 603 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015,” Vernaglia said. “It assumed the only reason hospitals were developing these sites was to take advantage of preferential outpatient payment.”

Site neutrality also gave an advantage to hospitals that were early movers in getting their outpatient facilities built. The downside, said Vernaglia, is they’re stuck with what they’ve got. They can’t build another one or relocate. And if they don’t own the building, they can’t threaten to move if the landlord jacks up the rent.

“Soon we’ll see facilities getting long in the tooth,” he said. “There will be fewer outpatient facilities off-campus. I think you’ll see more on-campus. It’s status quo for sure, unless you do some creative things like off-campus emergency.”

Developer Henry Johnson, chief strategy officer for Freese Johnson in Atlanta, Georgia, said hospitals are still building, because not to do so would mean the loss of a competitive edge. The ambulatory facilities may be less profitable now, but there’s the risk that the gap for off-site care will be filled by another facility, or physician practice.

“There’s a greater impact not filling these gaps in the marketplace,” Johnson said. “Right now it’s a battle for marketshare, rather than site-neutral payments.

Johnson has been in the business for over 20 years, working with healthcare systems and large physician practices.

“We’re building micro hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, outpatient surgery centers,” Johnson said. “Everyone is trying to build a network.”

Value-based care has also given incentives to have patients visit outpatient clinics, rather than the more expensive emergency room.

“They want to keep less expensive procedures in a less expensive environment,” Johnson said.

Providers are being cost-conscious on square-foot costs as well, he said.

“Most of our clients are saying, ‘This is expensive real estate. Let’s build a building that costs half as much, that’s what we want to do.'”

The two trends he’s seeing are micro hospitals, and smaller, acute care facilities, which he likens to “a hospital without beds.”

These freestanding ER facilities are still reimbursed at outpatient rates.

Patients would also rather go to a local, smaller facility, than drive to a hospital, try to find parking and walk the long hallways.

“They’re not going to go places if it’s inconvenient,” Johnson said.

Off-campus buildings, he said, invite people in.

“I’m personally seeing in healthcare, patients aren’t just patients now, they’re consumers,” Johnson said. “The biggest trend we’re seeing, is the consumerization of healthcare.”

 

What’s Causing America’s Rural Health Insurance Crisis?

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Over recent years, numerous rural health insurance markets have teetered on the brink of collapse. Rural areas have long posed a special challenge to health care policymakers, but a poorly-designed system of subsidies for rural hospital care has turned this into a crisis. It has fostered a rural hospital market structure that has crippled the ability of private insurers to negotiate reasonable payment rates, without fully securing the provision of essential care. By refocusing federal assistance on emergency care, it should be possible to restore rural insurance markets to health, while improving the affordability and access to care available to residents.

Warren Buffett once famously observed that “you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.” As the Affordable Care Act’s reforms have placed the nongroup market for health insurance under acute strain, it is rural areas that have been most exposed. Of 650 counties that have only a single insurer offering plans on their exchange, 70 percent are rural. For Medicare Advantage, despite total revenues roughly twice as large as the individual market, the situation is even worse—with 140 (mostly rural) counties lacking private insurance coverage options altogether.

It is more challenging to deliver healthcare services in sparsely populated areas. Small communities are unable to support full-time physicians for many medical specialties, and the fixed costs of multi-million-dollar hospital equipment cannot be spread across so many patients. As only 24 percent of rural residents can reach a top trauma center within an hour, rural areas suffer 60 percent of America’s trauma deaths, despite having only 20 percent of the nation’s population.

During the 1990s, economic pressures forced 208 rural hospitals to close. As a result, Congress established the Flex program to boost Medicare payments to isolated rural hospitals. Facilities designated as Critical Access Hospitals under the Flex program were intended to be more than 35 miles by major road from other facilities, but states were allowed to waive that requirement. As a result, the number of such hospitals grew from 41 in 1999 to more than 1,300 in 2011 – covering a quarter of U.S. hospitals, before Congress eliminated the states’ waiver power. By that time, 800 facilities exceeding the 35-mile requirement had been designated as CAHs, and these were grandfathered in.

What makes CAH status so attractive to hospitals? Instead of being paid standard Medicare rates for services, CAHs are allowed to claim reimbursement for whatever costs they incur in the delivery of covered inpatient, outpatient, post-acute and laboratory services to Medicare beneficiaries. Medicare pays more to facilities with the most expensive cost structures and eliminates incentives to control expenses – encouraging all to increase spending on new infrastructure and equipment.

Eighty-one percent of CAHs now have MRI scanners, for which they bill Medicare an average of $633 per scan—double the normal fee schedule rates. From 1998 to 2003, payments per discharge for acute care at CAHs rose by 21 percent, while post-acute care costs per day almost quadrupled. This upward pressure on costs has compounded over time: The longer a hospital has been a CAH, the more its costs have grown.

To check the capacity of CAHs to inflate their overheads, Medicare rules limit them to 25 beds. This has transformed the rural hospital landscape. In 1997, 85 percent of rural hospitals had more than 25 beds; by 2004 only 55 percent did. This makes it very difficult for the best-managed and most cost-effective facilities to win market share and has eliminated whatever competitive forces may have constrained costs. Nonetheless, excess capacity remains enormous: occupancy rates were only 37 percent in small rural hospital in 2014, compared with 64 percent in urban hospitals. Insurers covering care at such facilities must pay for equipment that is often unused and skilled physicians who spend much of their time idle.

Medicare Advantage (MA) plans have been hit hardest by this arrangement. MA plans usually attract enrollees by providing supplemental benefits and reduced out-of-pocket costs, funded by preventing unnecessarily costly hospitalizations. But, as CAHs are able to claim unconstrained reimbursement for Medicare beneficiaries directly from the government, they have little reason to agree to reasonable fees with MA plans, who may constrain their claims or steer enrollees to cheaper sites of care. Even under relatively loose network adequacy requirements, MA plans can, therefore, be effectively locked out of states dominated by CAHs. While 56 percent of Medicare beneficiaries in Minnesota are enrolled in MA plans, only 3 percent of those in Wyoming and 1 percent in Alaska are covered.

Low volumes and the absence of competition have also resulted in a lower quality of care. CAHs are more poorly-equipped than other hospitals, fall short on standard processes of care and have higher 30-day mortality rates for critical conditions. As a result, patients are increasingly willing to travel longer distance for treatments, with rural residents receiving 48 percent of elective care beyond their local providers. This bypass of rural provider networks is particularly common for surgeries on eye, musculoskeletal and digestive systems and for complex procedures more generally.

Although CAH status gives each hospital an average additional $500,000 of revenues, falling volumes of inpatient procedures and the increased costs entailed by this arrangement nonetheless leaves many facilities struggling. According to the National Rural Health Association, 55 rural hospitals closed between 2010 and 2015, while 283 were on brink of closure.

Can the $2 billion total annual cost of additional hospital subsidies provided by the Medicare Flex program not be better spent to support essential care in rural areas?

MedPAC, the agency established by Congress to advise it on Medicare payment policy, has argued that CAHs are “not the best solution”, as “many small towns do not have the population to support efficient, high-quality inpatient services.” MedPAC has proposed that Congress provide lump-sum payments to cover the overheads needed to provide 24/7 emergency care at geographically isolated outpatient-only facilities and suggested that Medicare reimbursement be extended to care provided by standalone emergency departments.

This would focus subsidies to secure emergency services, which must be delivered locally, while leaving elective care to be located efficiently according to market demand. Such a reform would give emergency rural hospital care a firmer financial foundation while restoring payment rules for elective care that would make it possible for insurers to re-enter the rural marketplace.

MIPS Takes a Beating at MedPAC

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MedPAC has been set on defeating the Merit-based Incentive Payment System for a long time; but whether the program should be simply “repealed” or “repealed and replaced” wasn’t clear at Thursday’s meeting.

Health policy experts sometimes battle for consensus over payment issues, but when it comes to the new way of paying most doctors under Medicare, one group reached near-unanimous agreement: Scrap it.

The Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) should be spiked, virtually all members of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) said during a meeting on Thursday morning.

MedPAC, whose members include physicians, healthcare executives, and other policy experts charged with advising the Department of Health and Human Services on Medicare policy issues, has been set on defeating MIPS for a long time; but whether the program should be simply “repealed” or “repealed and replaced” wasn’t clear at Thursday’s meeting.

At the start of the meeting, MedPAC’s analysts addressed the challenges with the MIPS program and proposed a potential alternative.

The Problem with MIPS

The MIPS program is one of two payment vehicles created as a result of the the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) — which replaced the almost universally despised Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula. The other payment pathway consists of an array of advanced Alternative Payment Models (APMs), which weren’t discussed in any detail at the meeting.

The main problem with the MIPS program, as MedPAC’s analysts see it, is that MIPS won’t achieve the policy goals that it’s designed to achieve.

The flexibility of the program — the various options for how physicians can report measures and the broad exemptions for certain types of clinicians — has made it overly complex. There are also statistical challenges that stem from trying to develop individual-level performance scores, due to the relatively small case sizes for some providers.

“Everyone will seem to have high performance when in fact many of the measures are topped out or appear to be topped out … and that will limit Medicare’s ability to detect meaningful differences in clinician performance,” said David Glass, a principal policy analyst for MedPAC.

In the end, Medicare gives clinicians a score based on their performance and either raises or reduces their Medicare payment based on that score, but for all the reasons Glass mentioned, he believes it is “extremely unlikely that physicians will understand their score or what they need to do to improve it.”

“Our most basic concern is that the measures in MIPS have not been proven to be associated with high-value care,” he said.

Alternative Proposed

Glass and MedPAC senior analyst Kate Bloniarz suggested an alternative policy approach that leverages population-based measures.

The Voluntary Value Program, as they’ve dubbed the alternative, would get rid of the MIPS program and all three types of reporting requirements — Advancing Care Information (ACI), Clinical Practice Improvement Activities (CPIA), and quality measures — and scrap CMS support for Electronic Health Records reporting.

In the new model, all clinicians would see a portion of their fee schedule dollars withheld, which would be lumped into a pool — for example 2%, though analysts stressed the percent amount had not been decided.

Clinicians would then have three options:

  • Choose to be measured with a “sufficiently large entity” of clinicians and be eligible for value payments
  • Choose to participate in an advanced APM model
  • Lose the withheld fee schedule dollars

In the first option, the “sufficiently large entity” could be those physicians affiliated with a single hospital or one geographic area, she said.

“An entity’s performance would then be collectively measured using a set of population-based measures,” Bloniarz added.

A limitation of the model is that entities must be “sufficiently large” in order to have “statistically detectable performance on the population based measures.”

In the Voluntary Value Program, measures could potentially fall under three categories: clinical quality, patient experience, and value. For example, a clinical quality measure might include mortality or avoidable admissions.

Unlike the MIPS program, all of the measures could be pulled from Medicare claims data or “centrally conducted surveys” avoiding the clinician reporting burden, Bloniarz explained.

Repeal and Replace?

Most members of the commission expressed support for the new model or at least felt it was a good start.

One new commissioner, David Grabowski, PhD, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, said he favored having a replacement, but he worried that some physicians, particularly those in rural areas, or those treating dual eligible patients (enrollees in both Medicare and Medicaid) might be left out. He stressed that incorporating proper risk adjustment mechanisms into the measurement process would be critical.

Paul Ginsburg, PhD, of the Brookings Institution, also supported a repeal-and-replace strategy.

“My sense is that the politicians don’t want to do nothing. They want to do something,” he said.

However, several commissioners were more hesitant, asking whether replacing the MIPS program was necessary.

“Are we creating something that is so close to the advanced APM structure that it’s almost not worth it?” asked Dana Gelb Safran, ScD, of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.

Gelb Safran suggested that if the commission does choose to recommend an alternative, distinctions between it and the APMs would need to be clear. She also wondered aloud whether with these new entities would revive some of the challenges of the old SGR formula.

The challenge with the SGR was that individuals weren’t truly accountable to each other even though they were lumped together, she explained.

“That really undercuts the desire to behave in the way that the incentives should make them behave because somebody else could kill their incentive, so why bother.”

Craig Samitt, MD, MBA of Anthem in Indianapolis, said he would favor a repeal-only approach, based on the replacement model he’d seen that day.

“If a replacement is a voluntary model that would allow us to keep practicing healthcare the way we’ve been practicing, then that replacement is not a good replacement,” Samitt said.

MedPAC member Kathy Buto, MPA, of Arlington, Virginia, suggested another idea: repeal the MIPS program, but continue to withhold the funds from the clinicians who aren’t participating in the advanced APMs. Then use those dollars to reward APM performance.

“I would actually increase the penalty and make it less attractive to stay in MIPS regardless,” she said.

Commission Chairman Francis J. Crosson, MD, joked that he would be happy to escort Buto from the meeting after it adjourned — implying her idea might be dangerously unpopular with physicians.

In the end, Crosson determined that MedPAC’s technical team would return to the group with draft recommendations for repealing the MIPS program and offer two options: a voluntary replacement program similar to the one discussed at Thursday’s meeting with some revisions, and suggestions on how to make the advanced Alternative Payment Models more accessible for physicians.

The commission could then decide whether to recommend one or both options to HHS.

Shift in physician workforce towards specialists fuels primary care shortage, potential spending growth

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Areas with more primary care physicians have lower spending per beneficiary, better care, patient satisfaction and lower death rates, authors say.

The composition of the healthcare workforce is shifting towards specialty physicians while primary care growth has gone flat, and according to a Health Affairs blog post, this trend could mean healthcare spending goes up not down.

Labor represents more than half of health care costs, and clinical workforce is a major driver of use and pricing, authors wrote, and there is plenty of support establishing a link between primary care-centered health systems and lower spending. Specifically, areas with more primary care physicians have lower spending per beneficiary, better care and patient satisfaction and lower death rates.

“Given this, many existing payment reform strategies prioritize primary care, and the success of these reforms will require a vibrant–and likely growing–primary care workforce,” the authors wrote.

Health Affairs delved into the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment Statistics files between 2005 and 2015, focusing their analysis on limited our analysis to ambulatory health care services, hospitals, and nursing and residential care facilities. There was an overall net increase of 2.6 million jobs over this period, six percent of them being physicians. While the number of primary care jobs rose by roughly eight percent, the number of specialist jobs increased six times faster. Also, the overall share of the physician workforce constituted by primary care fell from 44 to 37 percent, the blog said.

These trends raise concerns for access to care and spending. While in theory, the presence of more specialists in a given market could give way to more competition, lower prices and spending and better outcomes, public payer fees are set administratively and not necessarily susceptible to competition. Hospital/physician integration, patient preference could also hinder competition.

The trend of more specialists working in health systems that charge facility fees on top of already expensive prices for care, and the notoriously large salaries specialists make will also likely drive spending upward, authors said.

In light of the aforementioned belief that the strong presence of primary care providers reduces healthcare spending, the workforce trends may be cause for concern. Moreover, they add urgency to previous recommendations from various agencies aimed at bolstering primary care, like MedPac‘s suggestion that the Medicare fee schedule be altered to reflect the value of primary care and close disparities in the fee schedule that overcompensate certain specialists. HRSAhas recommended in the past the medical school funding be funneled toward students who will work in family medicine and other categories.

“If we are to bend the cost curve, we likely need to move more aggressively on fee schedule changes, payment reform, and workforce policies,” the authors said.