Full time physicians spend an average of one full day a week providing services for patients that are not reimbursed by Medicare, according to a new study conducted by Jeffrey Farber, MD, Assistant Professor of Geriatrics at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, and published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
The study results could potentially prod insurance companies and Medicare to catch up to physicians' current levels of productivity by reimbursing them for the care that is increasingly taking place outside of formal office visits.
"These services that are going un reimbursed are not unusual or luxury services," explained Dr. Farber. "These are basic elements of good patient care and include such things as talking with adult children, managing pain over the telephone, calling pharmacies, coordinating home care services like physical therapy and visiting nurses, and ordering equipment like canes and wheelchairs."...
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