ACR's Statement for the Record on the Sustainable Growth Rate
Statement for the Record
of the
before the
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission’s Report on the Sustainable Growth Rate
March 6, 2007
The
The ACR believes that the current methodology for reimbursing physicians using the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula is fatally flawed. This system has resulted in multiple years of payment reductions for physician services requiring Congress to step in to prevent cuts in order to ensure continued access to physician services for our nation’s seniors.
ACR is not alone in its views regarding the SGR as indicated by the 75 other medical specialty societies that have cosigned a document entitled “Joint Recommendations to Congress on Eliminating the SGR and Supporting Efforts to Promote Health Care Quality and Appropriateness.” This document submitted to the Subcommittee by the American Medical Association represents the broad wishes of the medical community to scrap the SGR and replace it with a more reasonable payment system.
Scrambling to provide last minute payment freezes at the end of legislative sessions has led to further flawed Medicare policies. One such policy that disproportionately affects the practice of radiology was contained in Sec. 5102 of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA), where the technical component payment for medical imaging services was arbitrarily capped at the lesser of the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) rate or the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (HOPPS) rate. This move by Congress effectively disregarded both long standing payment systems, founded upon years of objective resource based analysis and consensus building, in order to find revenue to pay for correcting another flaw in the system. An unprecedented move such as this, targeting one area of medicine, should not be casually regarded as it has now placed in jeopardy Medicare beneficiaries’ access to timely, and often lifesaving, outpatient imaging services.
While the ACR understands the need to reign in costs and ensure that the Medicare dollar is spent wisely, we believe that draconian reimbursement cuts do nothing to that end. In particular, when it comes to medical imaging services, other policies such as quality standards that ensure patient safety and appropriateness work better at containing costs through utilization controls than payment cuts.
The ACR looks forward to working with Congress this year to outline steps towards the ultimate goal of comprehensive payment policy reform.