-
Few Doctors See Medicare Pay Bumps for Care Quality Modern Healthcare by Virgil Dickson — Few doctors will benefit this year from a Medicare pay-for-performance program that promised more money if they hit key quality metrics in patient care. Only 20,000 clinicians will receive a pay bump of 6.6 percent to 19.9 percent this year based on how they performed in the final year of the value-based modifier program, which ended in 2016. However, "the overwhelming majority of clinicians received neutral payment adjustments," the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said in a notice. There are roughly 1.1 million clinicians that bill Medicare annually. CMS is withholding raises from some providers this year because they did not submit the data necessary to be evaluated. The agency estimates that nearly 300,000 clinicians failed to submit the data. In earlier years, these participating providers would have seen their pay reduced, but the 2018 physician-fee schedule gave these providers a pass and dictated that they would receive a neutral payment update instead.