Number Of Doctors Leaving Medicare Contested

By Greg Bengel, contributing writer

While some reports show patient access to Medicare is still excellent, the American Medical Association points to the financial burden on doctors who participate

A recent article on Health IT Outcomes reported that many doctors, fed up with Medicare reimbursement rates and rules, are no longer treating Medicare patients. The article references an article from The Wall Street Journal (subscription required, but you can read it here on South Coast Today), that says the number of doctors who dropped out of the Medicare program tripled from 2009 to 2012.

An article from NPR weighed in on the topic, taking a much different view of the matter. “Are doctors so fed up with Medicare’s stagnant pay and bureaucratic rules that they’re bailing out of the program?” the article asks. It then answers, “Short answer: Yes, some are. Long answer: Not as many as you might have thought.”

While it is true that the number of doctors who left the program in 2012 was 9,539, compared to 3,700 who left in 2009, NPR points out that there were still about 685,000 doctors participating in Medicare in 2012. Also, the article says, if you add in other caregivers, then over 1 million providers were still participating in Medicare in 2012.

The article points readers to a report from HHS, which found that access to care among Medicare beneficiaries appears to be excellent. The report, NPR says, “found that the proportion of docs taking new patients has held pretty steady for Medicare in recent years — rising about 3 percentage points, actually, to 90.7 percent in 2012 from 87.9 percent in 2005. In recent years, the proportion of doctors taking on new Medicare patients was higher than it was for those with private insurance.”

NPR also references a March report to Congress that states that approximately 14 percent of Medicare recipients looking for a new doctor said it was a “big problem.” But, the article counters, 15 percent of people in the age range from 50-64 with private insurance said the exact same thing.

These facts aside, doctors who participate in Medicare sill face enormous financial pressure. NPR ends its article with a quote from President of the American Medical Association, Dr. Ardis Hoven, which it does not counter. Hoven is quoted in this article from Forbes, “While Medicare physician payment rates have remained flat since 2001, practice costs have increased by more than 20 percent due to inflation, leaving physicians with a huge gap between what Medicare pays and what it costs to care for seniors.”