Posted on May 9th, 2012 by Frank Fortin
By Lynda M. Young, MD MMS President With the release of the Senate bill today, we now have two detailed legislative approaches to payment reform, along with the Governor’s legislation from last year. We recognize the need to bend the cost curve in Massachusetts, and we will continue to work with the House, the Senate [...]
Filed under: Accountable Care Organizations, Global Payments, Payment Reform | No Comments »
Posted on May 4th, 2012 by Frank Fortin
The Massachusetts House Friday released a comprehensive payment reform bill that seeks the cut $160 billion in health care spending in Massachusetts over the next 15 years. House Speaker Robert DeLeo characterized the bill as an effort to balance the need to cut health care costs for employers and families with a desire to keep [...]
Filed under: Accountable Care Organizations, Defensive medicine, Global Payments, Payment Reform | No Comments »
Posted on June 24th, 2011 by Frank Fortin
By Lynda Young, MD, MMS President Attorney General Coakley’s new study this week on health care costs and payment reform has been generating a lot of discussion. Here are some thoughts from our corner. We think it’s too early to declare payment reform a failure from a cost-cutting perspective. You can’t measure its effectiveness after [...]
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Posted on June 15th, 2011 by Frank Fortin
Every study of accountable care organizations recognizes that proper risk adjustment tools are critical to their success. Without adjustments for case-mix severity and other issues, providers’ cost and quality measures can be simply wrong. For example, hospitals and physicians who treat a high number of seriously or chronically ill patients would unfairly have inappropriate funding, [...]
Filed under: Accountable Care Organizations, Global Payments, Health Policy, Payment Reform, webinar | No Comments »
Posted on June 8th, 2011 by Lloyd Resnick
Richard Dupee, M.D., a Wellesley-based internist and geriatrician whose practice has about 10,000 patients, is among a dwindling segment of primary care physicians accepting new patients. “It’s a matter of business survival,” explained Dr. Dupee, whose practice accepts several new patients every week, including MassHealth enrollees. “I need to keep [patient] volume up to stay [...]
Filed under: Global Payments, Primary Care, workforce | No Comments »
Posted on June 6th, 2011 by Frank Fortin
Today, the MMS submitted 20 pages of comments on the federal government’s proposed regulations for Medicare accountable care organizations (ACOs). Our comments were based on the principles for health care reform approved by our House of Delegates last month. Our comments include: Physician leadership, from both primary care and specialty care physicians, for the implementation [...]
Filed under: Accountable Care Organizations, Global Payments, Medicare, Payment Reform | No Comments »
Posted on May 22nd, 2011 by Frank Fortin
Spirited debate at the MMS House of Delegates Saturday led to the adoption of 18 principles on health care reform that the Society plans to share with local and national legislators. The principle that dominated deliberations asserted that “health care reform must enable patient choice in access to physicians, hospitals, and other services while recognizing [...]
Filed under: Accountable Care Organizations, Annual Meeting 2011, Defensive medicine, Global Payments, Health Policy, Health Reform, Malpractice, Payment Reform, medical liability reform | No Comments »
Posted on May 9th, 2011 by Lloyd Resnick
In addressing more than 200 Massachusetts physicians gathered this morning for Doctors’ Day at the State House, Gov. Deval Patrick reiterated his sense of urgency about controlling unsustainable health care costs. “The complexity of this has to stop defeating us,” the governor said. “We have to stop looking for blame and start finding solutions.” At [...]
Filed under: Global Payments, Health Reform, Mass. Legislature, Payment Reform | No Comments »
Posted on January 28th, 2011 by Frank Fortin
MMS President Alice Coombs appeared this week on WGBH’s news program, “Greater Boston,” to talk about payment reform in Massachusetts. In her interview with Emily Rooney, Dr. Coombs said she’s concerned about the ability of small practices to make the necessary investments in technology and workflow to succeed in a global payment system. She also [...]
Filed under: Global Payments, Payment Reform | No Comments »
Posted on January 10th, 2011 by Frank Fortin
The American Medical Association has released one of the most comprehensive resources produced so far to help physicians evaluate their options for practice integration, accountable care organizations, and other issues, following the passage of federal health reform last year. The resource may also be helpful to Massachusetts physicians who are thinking about what statewide payment [...]
Filed under: Accountable Care Organizations, Electronic Medical Records, Electronic health records, Global Payments, Payment Reform | No Comments »
