It seems my parents' previous primary care physician – with whom they had a longstanding relationship – left and was very blunt about why: Medicare reimbursements had forced her practice to consolidate with a major hospital system.

The Medicare Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) is well-intentioned, but its reporting requirements are burdensome to physician practices and often appear to be clinically irrelevant, with a focus on checking boxes rather than improving care.

The gap between rising costs of providing care and falling Medicare physician payment will “become a significant issue in the long term.”

Doctors are paid 29% less today, when adjusted for inflation. This unsustainable path threatens older adults’ access to high-quality physician care.

Just months after Congress again failed to stop in its entirety a pay cut that threatens Medicare patients’ access to high-quality physician care, the AMA House of Delegates made crystal clear the imperative to step up the pressure on the nation’s lawmakers and boost patient awareness about the dire need for Medicare payment reform.

More than half of doctors still work in practices with 10 or fewer physicians. The viability of these physician practices—as well as those serving patients in rural, economically marginalized or underserved areas—may be at risk because Medicaid pays them even less than Medicare does.

This Advocacy Insights webinar dives into the latest AMA efforts on Medicare physician payment reform: what’s happening on Capitol Hill, how the AMA’s grassroots campaign is raising the volume and what to expect on the regulatory side.

Current law is not only failing the hundreds of thousands of doctors who participate in Medicare, but also the nearly 67 million senior and disabled Americans who depend on the program for continued access to high-quality medical care.

In March, Congress finally passed the delayed appropriations package which included a 1.68% reduction to the 3.37% Medicare physician payment cut that went into effect on January 1. While that relief was welcomed, it is not enough.