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Medicare: Focus on Physician Practice Patterns Can Lead to Greater Program Efficiency

GAO-07-307 Published: Apr 30, 2007. Publicly Released: Apr 30, 2007.
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Highlights

The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) directed GAO to study the compensation of physicians in traditional fee-for service (FFS) Medicare. GAO explored linking physician compensation to efficiency--defined as providing and ordering a level of services that is sufficient to meet a patient's health care needs but not excessive, given the patient's health status. In this report, GAO (1) estimates the prevalence in Medicare of physicians who are likely to practice inefficiently, (2) examines physician-focused strategies used by health care purchasers to encourage efficiency, and (3) examines the potential for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to profile physicians for efficiency and use the results. To do this, GAO developed a methodology using 2003 Medicare claims data to compare generalist physicians' Medicare practices with those of their peers in 12 metropolitan areas. GAO also examined 10 health care purchasers that profile physicians for efficiency.

Based on 2003 Medicare claims data, GAO's analysis found outlier generalist physicians--physicians who treat a disproportionate share of overly expensive patients--in all 12 metropolitan areas studied. Outlier generalists and other generalists saw similar numbers of Medicare patients and their respective patients averaged the same number of office visits. However, after taking health status and location into account, GAO found that Medicare patients who saw an outlier generalist--compared with those who saw other generalists--were more likely to have been hospitalized, more likely to have been hospitalized multiple times, and more likely to have used home health services. By contrast, they were less likely to have been admitted to a skilled nursing facility. Certain public and private health care purchasers routinely evaluate physicians in their networks using measures of efficiency and other factors. The 10 health care purchasers in our study profiled physicians--that is, compared physicians' performance to an efficiency standard to identify those who practiced inefficiently. To measure efficiency, the purchasers we spoke with generally compared actual spending for physicians' patients to the expected spending for those same patients, given their clinical and demographic characteristics. Most of the 10 purchasers also evaluated physicians on quality. To encourage efficiency, all 10 purchasers linked their physician evaluation results to a range of incentives--from steering patients toward the most efficient providers to excluding physicians from the purchaser's provider network because of inefficient practice patterns. CMS has tools available to evaluate physicians' practices for efficiency but would likely need additional authorities to use results in ways similar to other purchasers. CMS has a comprehensive repository of Medicare claims data to compute reliable efficiency measures for most physicians serving Medicare patients and has substantial experience using methods that adjust for differences in patients' health status. However, CMS may not currently have the flexibility that other purchasers have to link physician profiling results to a range of incentives encouraging efficiency. Implementation of other strategies to encourage efficiency would likely require legislation. CMS said that our recommendation was timely and that our focus on the need for risk adjustment in measuring physician resource use was particularly helpful. However, CMS only discussed using profiling results for educating physicians. GAO believes that the optimal profiling effort would include financial or other incentives to encourage efficiency and would measure the effort's impact on Medicare. GAO concurs with CMS that this effort would require adequate funding.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Given the contribution of physicians to Medicare spending in total, the Administrator of CMS should develop a profiling system that identifies individual physicians with inefficient practice patterns and, seeking legislative changes as necessary, use the results to improve the efficiency of care financed by Medicare. The profiling system should include total Medicare expenditures as the basis for measuring efficiency.
Closed – Implemented
In 2007, GAO recommended that CMS develop a system that identifies individual physicians with inefficient practice patterns and use the results to improve program efficiency. Specifically, GAO recommended that in addition to an episode of care framework, CMS should use total Medicare expenditures to measure efficiency. The Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA, P.L. 110-275) mandated the Secretary of Health and Human Services to develop and implement a physician feedback program by January 2009. On November 19, 2008, CMS published a federal register notice outlining the implementation of the Physician Feedback Program as required under Section 131(c) of MIPPA, which amends Section 1848(n)(1)(B) of the Social Security Act. CMS has completed Phase 1 of the physician profiling and feedback system. In May 2008, CMS awarded a contract to Mathematica Policy Research (MPR) to develop and disseminate Resource Use Reports (RURs) to physicians in a phased, pilot approach. The RURs focus on risk adjustment, attribution of cost, and benchmarking. CMS identified eight priority conditions and disseminated approximately 310 RURs to physicians in selected specialties who practiced in one of 13 geographic areas. The reports generally included both per capita and per episode resource use measures that were calculated according to five different attribution rules. The reports also contained multiple cost benchmarks relative to physicians in the same specialty and geographic area. Specifically, this work addresses GAO's recommendation to include total Medicare expenditures as a basis for measuring efficiency by using a per capita analysis for measuring cost of care in addition to pursuing an episode of care framework.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Given the contribution of physicians to Medicare spending in total, the Administrator of CMS should develop a profiling system that identifies individual physicians with inefficient practice patterns and, seeking legislative changes as necessary, use the results to improve the efficiency of care financed by Medicare. The profiling system should include adjustments for differences in patients' health status.
Closed – Implemented
In 2007, GAO recommended that CMS develop a profiling system that identifies individual physicians with inefficient practice patterns and use the results to improve program efficiency. Specifically, GAO recommended that the systeminclude adjustments for differences in health status. The Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA, P.L. 110-275) mandated the Secretary of Health and Human Services to develop and implement a physician feedback program by January 2009. On November 19, 2008, CMS published a federal register notice outlining the implementation of the Physician Feedback Program as required under Section 131(c) MIPPA which amends Section 1848(n)(1)(B) of the Social Security Act. CMS has completed Phase 1 of the physician profiling and feedback system. In May 2008, CMS awarded a contract to Mathematica Policy Research (MPR) to develop and disseminate Resource Use Reports (RURs) to physicians in a phased, pilot approach. The RURs focus on risk adjustment, attribution of cost, and benchmarking. CMS identified eight priority conditions and disseminated approximately 310 RURs to physicians in selected specialties who practiced in one of 13 geographic areas. The reports generally included both per capita and per episode resource use measures that were calculated according to five different attribution rules. The reports also contained multiple cost benchmarks relative to physicians in the same specialty and geographic area. Specifically, this work addresses GAO's recommendation to adjust for difference in patients' health status by comparing each patient's costs with costs of other patients with similar severity of illness indicators. Costs are adjusted for age, sex, dual Medicare-Medicaid status, ESRD status, illness severity, whether the patient was alive at the end of the calendar year or episode, and socioeconomic characteristics.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Given the contribution of physicians to Medicare spending in total, the Administrator of CMS should develop a profiling system that identifies individual physicians with inefficient practice patterns and, seeking legislative changes as necessary, use the results to improve the efficiency of care financed by Medicare. The profiling system should include empirically based standards that set the parameters of efficiency.
Closed – Implemented
Physician feedback reporting was initiated under section 131(c) of the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA), and was expanded by section 3003 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). In 2012, CMS provided Quality and Resource Use Reports (QRUR) to large providers nationwide and physician-focused QRURs to groups with 25 or more eligible providers in 9 states. In 2013, group and physician-focused QRURs were made available to all groups nationwide with at least 25 eligible professionals and by late-summer 2014, CMS plans to send QRURs to all group practices and solo practitioners. The QRURs include efficiency measures such as total per capita costs (Medicare A &B) and total per capita costs for beneficiaries with certain chronic conditions (e.g., diabetes). All cost measures are payment standardized and adjusted for patient risk. CMS finalized for 2014 adjusting the benchmark based on the specialty composition of the groups. Cost measures are compared to the national mean, with groups being considered low-, medium-, or high-cost based on the number of standard deviations they are above or below the national mean. The cost measures included in CMS's QRUR meet our recommendation that a profiling system should include empirically based standards that set the parameters of efficiency.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Given the contribution of physicians to Medicare spending in total, the Administrator of CMS should develop a profiling system that identifies individual physicians with inefficient practice patterns and, seeking legislative changes as necessary, use the results to improve the efficiency of care financed by Medicare. The profiling system should include a physician education program that explains to physicians how the profiling system works and how their efficiency measures compare with those of their peers.
Closed – Implemented
Physician feedback reporting was initiated under section 131(c) of the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA), and was expanded by section 3003 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). In 2012, CMS provided Quality and Resource Use Reports (QRUR) to large providers nationwide and physician-focused QRURs to groups with 25 or more eligible providers in 9 states. In 2013, group and physician-focused QRURs were made available to all groups nationwide with at least 25 eligible professionals and by late-summer 2014, CMS plans to send QRURs to all group practices and solo practitioners. The group QRURs include quality measures benchmarked against the prior-year's national average for all groups and cost measures benchmarked against current-year national averages. Physician-focused QRURs provide information on individual physician performance on the same measures, which can be compared to group and national averages from the group QRURs. CMS provided general information on its website and through the Medicare Learning Network, to assist providers in understanding the performance feedback. CMS resources included steps to access reports, a review of methodology, suggested ways to use the data in reports, and contact information for technical support. The profiling system used by CMS meets our recommendation that the system should include a physician education program that explains to physicians how the profiling system works and how their efficiency measures compare with their peers.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Given the contribution of physicians to Medicare spending in total, the Administrator of CMS should develop a profiling system that identifies individual physicians with inefficient practice patterns and, seeking legislative changes as necessary, use the results to improve the efficiency of care financed by Medicare. The profiling system should include financial or other incentives for individual physicians to improve the efficiency of the care they provide.
Closed – Implemented
Physician feedback reporting was initiated under section 131(c) of the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA), and was expanded by section 3003 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). In addition, PPACA required the Department of Health and Human Services to coordinate the physician feedback program with a Value Modifier (VM) that will adjust fee-for-service physician payments for the relative quality and cost of care provided to beneficiaries. In implementing the VM, CMS's Center for Medicare will use the Physician Quality Reporting System and cost data from groups of eligible physicians defined at the taxpayer identification number level to calculate the VM and then report the payment adjustments in the Quality and Resource Use Reports (QRUR). In 2015, CMS applied the VM to physicians in groups of 100 or more. In 2016, CMS will apply the VM to physicians in groups of 10 or more, and, in 2017, CMS will apply the VM to solo practitioners and physicians in groups of 2 or more.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Given the contribution of physicians to Medicare spending in total, the Administrator of CMS should develop a profiling system that identifies individual physicians with inefficient practice patterns and, seeking legislative changes as necessary, use the results to improve the efficiency of care financed by Medicare. The profiling system should include methods for measuring the impact of physician profiling on program spending and physician behavior.
Closed – Implemented
Physician feedback reporting was initiated under section 131(c) of the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA), and was expanded by section 3003 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). In addition, PPACA required the Department of Health and Human Services to coordinate the physician feedback program with a Value Modifier (VM) that will adjust fee-for-service physician payments for the relative quality and cost of care provided to beneficiaries. In 2012, CMS provided Quality and Resource Use Reports (QRUR) to large providers nationwide and physician-focused QRURs to groups with 25 or more eligible providers in 9 states; by 2014, CMS sent QRURs to all group practices and solo practitioners. Also, as required in the act, CMS applied the VM to select physicians in 2015, with all physicians being subject to VM by 2017. The Act requires the VM to be implemented in a budget neutral manner, meaning that any upward payment adjustments for high performance must balance the downward payment adjustments applied for poor performance. In February 2017, CMS's Office of the Actuary (OACT) issued a memo detailing its calculation of how payment adjustments would be modified for payment year 2017 to ensure budget neutrality. As part of this memo, OACT included the results of an analysis of 2015 and 2016 physician claim payments used to assess how volume and intensity of services were affected by the group practices' 2016 VM payment adjustment. OACT found that groups receiving downward payment adjustments increased the volume and/or intensity of services delivered in 2016 to offset a portion of the impact of a payment reduction. In contrast, groups that received a positive payment adjustment did not show an increase in volume and intensity for 2016. OACT's analysis demonstrates that CMS has a methodology for measuring the impact of physician profiling on physician behavior and that it modifies payment adjustments accordingly to ensure budget neutrality. As a result, we consider this recommendation to be closed-implemented.

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