Incentives Benefit Medicare Treatments

The CMS has successfully demonstrated that providing financial incentives for health care improvement improves not only the quality of health care but also reduces costs. Three demonstrations – one for hospitals, one for small and solo physicians and one for large physicians have yielded demonstrable results.

The programs that test value based purchasing have yielded encouraging results. The purpose of these demonstrations is to tie Medicare payments to efficiency and quality. Participating hospitals are showing a continued increase in quality. For small and solo physicians also a rewards program has been set up for providing high quality care for patients with chronic illnesses.

225 hospitals are being awarded incentive payments of over $12 million. Physician groups have also improved quality and shared savings. Quality performance has resulted in incentives to over 560 small physician practices. Meanwhile retirees are being stripped of employer provided health care benefits. If the trend continues government retirees could be affected as well.

The change in accounting standards that happened in 1992 is one of the main reasons for the loss of benefits to the private sector. Lesser and lesser companies are providing health care benefits to employees.