More than 170 healthcare organizations, including the California Medical Association (CMA), are supporting a new national study being conducted by the American Medical Association (AMA) that will collect representative data on physician practice expenses. The Physician Practice Information Survey aims to better understand the costs physicians practices face today to support physician payment advocacy, with hopes of communicating accurate financial information to policymakers, including members of Congress and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
Used by many different payors and maintained by CMS, the Medicare physician payment schedule currently relies on 2006 cost information to develop practice expense relative values, the Medicare Economic Index and resulting physician payments. Due to the U.S. economy, as well as the healthcare system, going through substantial changes over the last 17 years, include inflation and the wide-spread adoption of electronic health records, practice expense payments no longer accurately reflect the relative resources that are typically required to provide physician services.
AMA has contracted with Mathematica, an independent research company with extensive experience in survey methods as well as health care delivery and finance reform, to conduct the study.
Physicians will be randomly selected from July 2023 - April 2024 to participate, and CMA strongly urges all physicians who are selected to respond as soon as possible, as the number of direct patient-care hours is a critical component of the Medicare payment methodology.
CMA also noted that, if contacted, AMA and Mathematica will make data collection as convenient for you and your practice as possible and assure you that your individual data will be kept private. Participation is voluntary but critical to the success of efforts to support accurate resource-based physician payment.
The AMA study will rely on financial experts in the practice to complete an online financial information survey.
Click Here to read the Letter of Support.