When Medicare Billing Codes Lose Their Leverage
4sight Health July 13, 2022
Hospitals, health systems and medical practices are businesses just like businesses in any other industry. They respond to economic incentives, and they do things for economic reasons. Plain and simple.
Well, maybe not so plain and simple. A new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggests that the above may be true, but only if hospitals, health systems and medical practices are good business people.
Three physician researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston looked for any link between physicians’ use of Medicare billing codes for prevention and care coordination services and the provision of those services by the physicians. The assumption is, if you pay doctors to do the right thing — such as providing prevention and...