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| Agnieszka Guzowska/Shuttestock |
A report issued Wednesday by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPac), “Medicare and the Health Care Delivery System,” is urging significant reforms to the way physicians are paid under the Medicare program, including a variety of options for replacing the Sustainable Growth Rate component of the current formula. That component, which requires that increases in Medicare volume be compensated for by decreases in physician payment, would mandate an across-the-board cut in physician payment of 21 percent on January 1, 2012. An earlier report by MedPAC in April urged Congress to rescind the scheduled payment cut and replace it with an increase in payment of one percent. For more information see Psychiatric News, http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/46/8/6.2.full.