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In the rush forward into alternative payment models, including accountable care organization (ACO)-based models, could primary care physicians be in the process of being progressively disadvantaged? A new analysis by a medical researcher suggests that such might be the case, at least when it comes to payment for evaluation and management (E&M) services.
Writing in the February 7 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, Bruce E. Landon, M.D., has done an analysis of a complex, somewhat technical set of issues, around E&M service payments, in an article entitled “A Step toward Protecting Payments for Primary Care.” Dr. Landon, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School and a professor of medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who practices internal medicine at BIDMC, writes that “Even as the U.S. health care system increasingly adopts alternative payment models such as accountable care organizations, the traditional fee-for-service system continues to be the most commonly used method of physician payment