Being tested in 5 markets.
Hospitals get the money from CMS and the hospital pays the doc.
This is to encourage better patient care and keep costs down.
Anyone have experience with this or know about it?
Yes,
this has been underway for over a year now. I am not participating, so no firsthand experience, but another very scary idea for us docs who aren't owned by the hospitals. What is the hospital's incentive to play fair? Would withholding the physician's payment be another means to control our clinical decisions?
What is the chance the hospital taking advantage of this:
The hospital would be paid its usual inpatient rate for the patient's care, but would pay to the physician a portion of the savings resulting from quality improvement and efficiency initiatives taken by the physician.
"Sorry doctor, we can't pay you because your length of stay for (insert name of octogenerian patient here) exceeded our projections, based on comparison to our salaried physicians length of stay."
Some early impressions in this
article .
