Proposed CMS pay changes for 2021

[wamcp]

---

Members do not see this ad.

If such a thing does go through as is, is this a big impact for hospitalist/IM/subspecialties?

Allergy immunology +9%
Cardiology +1%
Critical care -8%
Endocrine +17%
GI -5%
Geriatrics +4%
Heme onc +14%
ID -4%
Internal med +4%
Renal +6%
Pulmonary +1%

By the way, in regards to the CMS administrator salaries, which no proposals ever come out to reduce their pay but they get to play with ours:

Also, if you see their qualifications needed to apply: " This job does not have an education qualification requirement. "

Supervisory Auditor "supervisory auditor" 170K

Supervisory Health Insurance Specialist "supervisory health insurance specialist" 170K

Supervisory Program Manager "supervisory program manager" 170K

 

[DrStephenStrange]

Cutting down on Infectious Disease Docs salaries in the middle of the pandemic. Makes perfect sense lol.

 

[CCM-MD]

-8% for critical care. +8% for NPs. What a joke.

I don't think there is much of an impact if you are hospital employed. Most of us are salaried or shift based +/- productivity. Isn't gonna change much. I think private practices will see the revenue impact. The MGMA/AMGA/Sullivan Cotter numbers impact us more than this junk.

 

[chessknt]

Lots to unpack but the origin of this hearkens back to the ACA passing along party lines with budget neutrality to avoid fillibsuter (back when this institution was still respected). If they want to increase pay to FPs they have to take it away from another specialty.

And if the changes really seem upsetting take a look at the underpinnings of the system (RVUs, the RUC). The CMS clowns have no idea how much to pay physicians so they rely on physicians to tell them. The RUC consists almost entirely of surgical subspecialists who have to rank the 'technical skill' and time spent for each CPT code that medicare reimburses. How do you think they view e/m billing codes (of which there are less to describe all of office-based medicine than there are CPT codes to describe variations of a cholecystectomy) compared to the surgical ones?