Rethinking your Medicare participation options?

With just a little more than three weeks left before the wheels could fall off Medicare payments, you may be rethinking your level of involvement with the program.

Congress may step in again this year to avoid the scheduled 26.5 percent cut tied to the Sustainable Growth Rate formula. But if not, here is a brief look at the options open to you and ways to reduce your Medicare exposure, even if you remain a participating physician.

You have three Medicare contractual options. You can sign a participating (PAR) agreement, accepting Medicare's allowed charge as payment in full; elect to be a non-PAR physician, which allows you to take Medicare patients on a case-by-case basis and bill patients for more than the Medicare allowance for unassigned claims; or opt out and become a private contracting physician who bills Medicare-eligible patients directly for your services.

You have until Dec. 31 to change your Medicare participation or non-participation status for 2013. Before making a change in status, you should first determine that you are not bound by any contractual arrangements with hospitals, health plans, or other entities that require you to be a PAR physician.

Even if you choose to continue being a PAR physician, there are ways that you can limit your Medicare exposure. For instance, you can refuse to treat Medicare patients except on an emergency basis. Medicare is a voluntary program, and nothing requires you to treat Medicare patients in your practice if you do not wish to do so. You can also limit your practice to existing Medicare patients only and accept no new Medicare patients. Lastly, you can reduce the number of Medicare patients in your practice.

For more information, see Family Practice Management's previously published articles on opting out of Medicare and preparing for a Medicare fee cut.  

–Kent Moore, Senior Strategist for Physician Payment for the American Academy of Family Physicians