Commentary: Bipartisan Medicare relief package is a major win for PCPs
The past year has been difficult for primary care physicians and our patients.
However, I am grateful to be starting the new year with good news: Congress has stepped in to support primary care practices and ensure we can continue to provide our patients with the best possible care.
On Dec. 10, after House action, the Senate passed the Protecting Medicare and American Farmers from Sequester Cuts Act (Senate Bill 610). This bipartisan legislation, which has since been signed into law by President Joe Biden, postpones a series of Medicare payment cuts that was scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2022. This represents a major win for family physicians and our primary care colleagues by providing temporary financial stability so we can focus our attention where it is needed the most: providing comprehensive medical care for families.
As a practicing family physician, I know that Medicare payments affect my practice, my staff and my patients. The law will increase the 2022 Medicare conversion factor by 3%, delay Medicare sequester cuts for 3 months and postpone steep payment cuts for clinical labs — actions for which family physicians have strongly advocated. In layperson’s terms, this relief ensures that practices can keep their doors open and continue serving the patients who know and trust them. In the middle of a public health crisis, this cannot be taken for granted.
This legislation will be a relief for my fellow family physicians who have been worried about the tough choices they would have to make in the face of these Medicare payment cuts. Fewer than 30% of primary care physicians are reporting that their practices are on solid financial footing. Many practices have not made up the losses they experienced at the onset of the pandemic. To keep their doors open, some primary care practices might have had to consider limiting the number of Medicare patients they care for, ultimately inhibiting patients’ timely, equitable access to care in their community.
Medicare payment cuts would have forced some practices to sell to large health systems or even to close their doors permanently, leaving patients without their trusted primary care physician and less affordable care options. As a physician in rural Virginia, I can tell you these cuts would also have significantly impacted the ability of patients in my area to find a physician and receive the care they need. Think about it: if you’re a patient in a rural community and a doctor’s office closes, the options for care shrink drastically.
It is clear this Medicare relief package benefits patients, physicians and communities across the nation, but we are not out of the woods yet. Instead of routinely having to scramble to avert annual payment cuts, comprehensive reform is needed to establish a long-term, sustainable mechanism to pay for Medicare physician services that invests in primary care and gives practices the resources they need to provide longitudinal, coordinated, whole-person primary care services.
The American Academy of Family Physicians, the organization I represent, looks forward to working with Congress on tangible and meaningful solutions to address long-standing issues with the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, including budget neutrality, which undermines the country’s ability to invest in primary care, and the Quality Payment Program, which has fallen short of its intended goal to support physicians in their transition from fee-for-service to value-based payment models.
We are appreciative that Congress provided urgently needed financial relief for physician practices. However, the pandemic has shed light on the need for more comprehensive reforms — long-term changes that will empower physicians to provide high-quality, person-centered care to patients rather than penalize them with arbitrary payment cuts. Only when these changes are made will physicians be truly supported and Medicare patients better protected.