On Monday, Obama administration proposed an incredible plan to speed up the payment reform of Medicare. The chief purpose of the administration is to tie Medicare payments with quality instead of quantity.
The move would be certainly very beneficial for patients. The current method of payment offers money even if the treatment is worse. For instance, health insurance organization pays health professional even if they have not treated the patient carefully. Hence, the newly presented plan is to make sure patients are getting good services.
However, some of the doctors believe that it is not possible to determine the quality of the treatment. James, L Madara, Executive director of American Medical Association notifies that the health of patients is chiefly dependent upon the condition of the disease. Sometimes, it is beyond the control of doctors to improve the health condition of patients. In these kinds of cases, the new proposal would not be able to pay the doctors fairly.
In 2014, federal government asked nearly 1,675 health service providers to submit data as per the quality.
Currently, around 80 percent of the doctors and hospitals under Medicare are paid according to their performance. Burewell Sylvia, secretary of HHS informs that government wish to raise the rate up to 90 percent till 2018.