AAFP Statement: Fee Schedule Rectifies Payment Disparities

Statement attributable to:
Lori Heim, MD
President
American Academy of Family Physicians

“Publication of the final 2010 Medicare physician fee schedule and regulations demonstrates the continued recognition that a high quality, efficient health care system must rest on a foundation of primary medical care.

“The 2010 fee schedule provides important payment changes through practice expense adjustments, eliminated consultation codes and more-accurately valued costs of high-tech medical technology. These policies will improve payment for primary care physicians and help ensure that all Americans have access to a personal physician who can ensure they get the right care at the right time in the right place.

“The AAFP commends CMS for simplifying the reporting requirements for the electronic prescribing and the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative. These will encourage more physicians to adopt EHR systems and e-prescribing, which will help improve efficiency and reduce the potential for medical errors, duplication of services and fragmentation of care.

“The final rule recognizes the need to improve payment for primary care and help establish a foundation on which meaningful and sustainable health care system reform can be built.

“Like our counterparts throughout the physician community, however, family physicians are deeply disturbed that the final rule must implement a 21.2 percent Medicare physician pay cut for 2010. This drastic reduction demonstrates the urgent need for Congress to implement legislation that permanently addresses the flawed sustainable growth rate formula on which Medicare physician payment is based. We have separately called on Congress to eliminate the SGR and act on physician payment reform before these drastic payment cuts go into effect on Jan.1, 2010.”