MedPage Today November 12, 2019
Payment structure is “toxic” to diagnosis, says David Newman-Toker, MD, PhD
WASHINGTON — Eliminating fee-for-service reimbursement would go a long way toward reducing diagnostic errors, David Newman-Toker, MD, PhD, said Tuesday at the Diagnostic Error in Medicine annual conference here.
“The fee-for-service payment structure is, in my opinion, toxic to diagnosis,” said Newman-Toker, who is professor of neurology, ophthalmology, and otolaryngology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “General theory says that fee-for-service can’t be bad because it doesn’t disincentivize ordering tests, so you can order whatever tests you need to to make the correct diagnosis. However, it encourages you to do more testing rather than right testing, and encourages you to go fast and be thoughtless,” he said. “It’s cheaper...