More Doctors See Medicare Patients Despite Cuts in Pay

WASHINGTON – The percentage of physicians who accept new Medicare patients has increased during the past fours years despite a slight drop in physicians’ reimbursement rates, a study shows.

The findings suggests that doctors would not quit seeing Medicare patients if Congress had gone ahead with a proposed 4.4 cut in reimbursement rates in 2006, one of the authors said.

Paul Ginsburg, the president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan research organization, said that year after year of fee cuts would lead to an exodus. But based on recent history, most doctors are willing to accept a one-time hit, he said.

“Policymakers should recognize that Medicare fees are only one factor in physician decisions to accept new patients,” he said.

Congress is expected to halt the pay cut when they return to Washington this month, in large measure because of extensive lobbying by doctors who said the cut would force many physicians to quit accepting new Medicare patients.

The American Medical Association said its own survey shows that 38 percent of physicians planned to decrease the number of new Medicare patients if the 4.4 percent cut went through.

Dr. J. Edward Hill, the association’s president, noted that the formula Congress uses to set physician payments projects further payment cuts of 26 percent over the next six years, while the cost of practicing medicine is projected to increase at least 15 percent.

Mr. Ginsburg’s group conducts a physicians’ survey each year. The survey that encompassed parts of 2000 and 2001 showed that the percentage of U.S. physicians accepting all new Medi-care patients stood at 71.1 percent.The next year, Con-gress cut payment rates by 5.4 percent, and subsequent increases of 1.5 percent have occurred annually.

The center’s latest survey puts the percentage of doctors accepting all new Medicare patients at 72.9 percent.