Medical groups urge replacement of SGR

Dozens of medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the Medical Group Management Association, are calling on federal lawmakers to repeal Medicare’s sustainable growth-rate formula and enact other payment reforms.

In joint recommendations sent to Congress, the Obama administration and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, some 60 organizations asked that the SGR be eliminated and replaced with a system that reflects increases in physicians’ and other health professionals’ practice costs, according to Modern Physician.

The SGR is based on the health of the economy and has been threatening cuts to physician payments for at least six years. Physicians in 2010 face a 21 percent cut to their Medicare payments unless Congress intervenes.

If Congress doesn’t repeal the SGR this year, the groups recommended that Congress and the White House adopt a transitional approach that links payments to the Medicare Economic Index for five years.

Similar recommendations to the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees were released by the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians and the American Osteopathic Association.

Specifically, these groups called on Congress to direct HHS to make Medicare payments for primary care “competitive in the market with other specialties within five years,” Modern Physician reported.