Survey on Sustainable Growth Rate Cuts; Provide Your Input

With the 29.5-percent Sustainable Growth Rate cut set for January 1, 2012, and the ongoing problems with the Medicare fee schedule, physicians report taking, planning, or considering different actions to approach the issue. Please follow the link below to take a quick survey that will help the North Carolina Medical Society better understand how the proposed cut will impact North Carolina patients. The results of the survey will also allow the Society to productively communicate with Congress and the media regarding these issues. As always, individual responses are confidential and only aggregate results will be reported.

Take the survey.

 
 

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5 Comments

  • Robert Townsend, DO

    It is difficult to look at what is happening in government healthcare and not realize several things:
    1)the new reporting requirements/regulations are designed to drive the private practitioner out of business,
    2)the incentive payments are woefully inadequate to cover the real costs of implementing the “Medical Home,” or cover the overhead of increased reporting/increase record keeping,
    3)after reading the (400 page) synopsis of the new health care legislation, the intention is to kill privaate insurance and give the HHS Secretary complete unregulated control of all medical care regardless of whether we accept gov’t insurance or not.
    The SGR hasn’t been corrected because our government has realized for years that the current model for paying for helthcare is unsustainable. In face of the failure of that system, they have doubled down on the same model dressing it up with fancy names that play well on headlines while hiding the failure of their choices. Sadly, they realize we are politically weak and the public can be counted on to vote in favor of their purse not realizing the consequences until it is too late. We on the other hand have allowed ourselves to become permanently enmeshed in a system that can’t help but cause what we complain so loudly about. Our answer is complex, but requires training more physicians and getting off this train that is taking us to the death of our economic and professional autonomy. Unfortunately there is too little time to flesh this out here, I have complete my P4P logs.

  • On behalf of my 10 Pulmonology/Critical Care Physicians, our core population is Medicare. Our patients have extensive issues and many are at the cusp of life and death, struggling for every breath. The on-going reductions in Medicare dollars and the increasing administrative requirements are causing unreasonable demands and are strong arming physicians away from their primary focus: providing exceptional care for every patient. The issues are compounded by shrinking reimbursements and the inability to be adequately paid for the services rendered. Physicians are being left with little or no options and tragically, the end result is the Medicare population will suffer the hardest blow.

  • Karl W Hubbard MD

    I’m not even waiting to see whether this happens. I just closed my solo private orthopedic practice June 30,2011.

  • gary bean md

    we will stop seeing medicare PERIOD if this is enacted

  • Michael Menz, MD

    I will see the absolute minimum patients with Medicare, will cut staff and overhead if that’s what it takes to survive.
    I will try to get to a point where I can retire or leave medicine.