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...a number of proposals have been developed to block the fee cut, but there's no guarantee that the cut will be averted this summer. (The seemingly annual battle that family physicians and other doctors fight against Medicare fee cuts can be blamed in part on the sustainable growth rate formula, which is addressed on page 9 in "Medicare's (Un)sustainable Growth Rate," an Opinion piece by Steven Wilk, MD, and Robert L. Phillips Jr., MD, MSPH.) If Congress does not intervene in the interim, here are some suggestions about how to prepare for and cope with the impending cut.
STEP 1: Evaluate the impact
The first step is to determine how big an impact the cut in Medicare fees would have on your practice. Part of this is knowing what percentage of your practice income is tied to traditional Medicare patients. In the typical family medicine practice, about 22 percent of patients are Medicare beneficiaries. (1) Thus, a 10.6 percent cut...
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