Apparently and unfortunately, not in this Sept 12th WSJ Health Blog (subscribers or available for 7 days), Feds Crack Down on Physician ‘Self-Referral” per this document from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (a mere 500+ pages for those who are into this stuff), self-referral arrangements are “corrupting medical decision-making” by creating incentive for doctors to refer patients who don’t really need procedures.
Asp part of a proposal that could go into effect soon, it would largely target joint ventures between doctors and hospitals as well as so called specialty hospitals that are owned by physicians.
The poster child for documenting the huge overutilization of MD owned facilities, Jean Mitchell (health care economist at Georgetown Univ) is quoted, “Self-referral arrangements represent an inherent conflict of interest for physician investors”.
Only problem is that PT is not mentioned either in the article or in the CMS document merely because while performed in a physician office it is considered “incident to”. Congratulations-once again to our great branding image. We should be proud to tell our grandchildren that we are “incidental”.
Many of us have been saying that to fight physician self-referral you have to couch it with other services that are in this mix (namely specialty hospital, imaging centers-those that are much more then just a single MRI, and hospital/MD joint ventures).
Where is our national association’s response to these on-going news reports? Wouldn’t you just love to see national press releases with appearances in various news services and TV shows citing this article and bringing to the forefront Physical Therapy as a self-referral victim as well? (ok, I realize that this couldn’t generate the over 20+ sources that wrote on backbacks and return to school but I can hope). Aren’t we a noticeable omission in this debate?
Lastly, and perhaps more importantly, get your dollars talking. The Foundation for Physical Therapy needs your money to help in making a call to the Jean Mitchell’s of the world to conduct a self-referral analysis similar to what was done years ago in the PT world which documented similar patterns.
Larry@physicaltherapist.com
