AAFP, others oppose legal assault on RBPE
Hospital-based specialties are claiming primary care's Medicare increases for 1999-2001.
The AAFP and other office-based groups are fighting back.
Here's the play-by-play.
On Nov. 2, the Health Care Financing Administration proposed a method for the 1999-2001 transition to a fee schedule using resource-based practice expenses.
The base year for the transition, said HCFA, should be 1998, the year primary care received a $330 million "down payment" on the RBPE.
However, on Nov. 4, 11 hospital-based groups filed a suit against HCFA, saying the base year should be 1991. The groups represent ophthalmologists, neurosurgeons, cardiologists, orthopedists, gastroenterologists, and cataract and refractive surgeons.
Their strategy would transfer to hospital-based groups many gains for primary care since 1991.
At issue: several hundred million dollars in 1999-2001 payments, including the 1998 down payment.
By 2002, the fee schedule will use the full RBPE. According to HCFA, the typical family physician providing mainly office-based services will receive a 9 percent increase in total Medicare payments compared with 1997 payments. Those funds are not in jeopardy, but the 1999-2001 increases are.
Therefore, office-based specialties, including the American College of Physicians/American Society of Internal Medicine and the AAFP, will soon submit an amicus brief to the federal district court in Chicago, concurring with HCFA.
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department. Copyright © 1999 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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