Quantifying Indirect Billing Within the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule.

IF 9.5 Q1 HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES
John F Mulcahy, Sadiq Y Patel, Ateev Mehrotra, Hannah T Neprash
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Importance: Under certain circumstances, advance practice clinicians (APCs), such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners, can bill Medicare directly or indirectly (ie, incident to the services of a physician). With indirect billing, the submitted claim states the care was provided by the physician, and the reimbursement is higher.

Objective: To quantify volume and spending on office-based encounters billed indirectly in the Medicare program.

Design, setting, and participants: This cohort study used Medicare fee-for-service and Medicare Advantage claims data to identify indirectly billed APC services. To do so, office-based Medicare Part B claims (ie, clinician services) were linked to Part D claims for prescription drug fills. Because the latter contains the prescribing clinician's unique identifier, this linkage distinguished between directly and indirectly billed services provided by APCs. In this way, the fraction of encounters and component services billed indirectly by APCs and physicians were quantified.

Main outcomes and measures: Share of fee-for-service and Medicare Advantage office encounters provided by APCs and billed indirectly. Share of a physician's billed claims actually provided by an APC and billed indirectly.

Results: In 2022, of all office encounters provided by an APC, 38.9% were billed indirectly. Conversely, for the median physician in 2022, indirect billing on behalf of APCs represented 11.1% of all billed encounters. Billing for care delivered by APCs was most common among surgical specialists (29.7% of encounters) and least common for primary care physicians (3.9%). If all indirectly billed APC-provided care was billed directly by the APC, Medicare would have saved $270 million in 2022.

Conclusions and relevance: The results of this cohort study suggest that APCs provide a substantial fraction of office-based care received by Medicare beneficiaries. Identifying indirectly billed APC-provided care is integral to understanding who serves Medicare beneficiaries.

在医疗保险医师收费表中量化间接计费。
重要性:在某些情况下,高级临床医生(apc),如医师助理和执业护士,可以直接或间接地向医疗保险收费(即,与医生的服务有关)。使用间接计费,提交的索赔声明护理是由医生提供的,报销更高。目的:量化医疗保险计划中间接收费的办公室就诊的数量和支出。设计、设置和参与者:本队列研究使用医疗保险按服务收费和医疗保险优势索赔数据来确定间接收费的APC服务。为了做到这一点,基于办公室的医疗保险B部分索赔(即临床医生服务)与处方药填充的D部分索赔相关联。由于后者包含处方临床医生的唯一标识符,这种联系区分了由apc提供的直接和间接收费服务。通过这种方式,就诊和由apc和医生间接收费的组成服务的比例被量化。主要结果和措施:由apc提供并间接计费的按服务收费和医疗保险优势办公室遭遇的份额。医生账单索赔的份额实际上是由APC间接提供的。结果:2022年,在APC提供的所有办公室会面中,38.9%是间接收费的。相反,对于2022年的中位数医生来说,代表apc的间接计费占所有计费就诊的11.1%。由apc提供的医疗服务的账单在外科专家中最常见(29.7%),在初级保健医生中最不常见(3.9%)。如果所有间接收费的APC提供的医疗服务都由APC直接收费,医疗保险将在2022年节省2.7亿美元。结论和相关性:这项队列研究的结果表明,apc提供了很大一部分医疗保险受益人接受的基于办公室的护理。识别间接收费的apc提供的护理对于了解谁为医疗保险受益人服务是不可或缺的。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
4.00
自引率
7.80%
发文量
0
期刊介绍: JAMA Health Forum is an international, peer-reviewed, online, open access journal that addresses health policy and strategies affecting medicine, health, and health care. The journal publishes original research, evidence-based reports, and opinion about national and global health policy. It covers innovative approaches to health care delivery and health care economics, access, quality, safety, equity, and reform. In addition to publishing articles, JAMA Health Forum also features commentary from health policy leaders on the JAMA Forum. It covers news briefs on major reports released by government agencies, foundations, health policy think tanks, and other policy-focused organizations. JAMA Health Forum is a member of the JAMA Network, which is a consortium of peer-reviewed, general medical and specialty publications. The journal presents curated health policy content from across the JAMA Network, including journals such as JAMA and JAMA Internal Medicine.
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