Comprehensiveness is Killing Primary Care – Health Econ Bot
from THCB at http://bit.ly/2MHyXtV on August 24, 2018 at 05:10PM
The primary care practices of Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth Maine have lost many, if not most, of their providers in recent years after some belt-tightening due to running the clinics at a loss. They are not able to see new patients for six months or more. BUT the hospital is actively promoting its walk-in urgent care center – and they don’t seem to have trouble staffing it, and don’t appear to be losing very much money on it.
Quick and easy acute care visits could generate revenue with positive cash flow for primary care practices, especially for Federally Qualified Health Centers with their flat rate reimbursement, but possibly for all practices, if CMS’ new proposal to scrap differentiated Evaluation and Management codes becomes reality. But the requirement to weigh down the simplest visits with all those screening requirements eliminates the incentive to nimbly meet patients’ need for access.
The end result will be that primary care providers will become chronic care providers only, and care will be fragmented so that anything profitable will be siphoned off to freestanding entrepreneurs or hospital-owned profit centers. Meanwhile, primary care practices risk becoming more and more of a millstone around their hospital owners neck because all their patient visits are more complex and costly than the reimbursement scheme can support.
Sometimes you need to be quick and sometimes you need to be slow. Without the freedom to adapt, in a patient-centered way, to the situation, each patient presents with, primary care risks going under.
Previous Post When It Comes to Collaboration, Sectors Emphasize Technical Aspects Over Cultural Ones
Next Post Cigna, Express Scripts Shareholders OK $67B Acquisition