Medicare 2025 Fee Schedule Initial Reactions

Well the Final Rule for the 2025 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) dropped into my email Friday about 4:40 pm. Of course they announce this on a Friday evening. The headline – which should be no surprise – is that the Conversion Factor (CF) will be decreasing by 2.83% from its 2024 value, to $32.35. …

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CareDash is an Atrocious Company

3 August 2022 UPDATE:  PsiAN (Psychotherapy Action Network) has written a letter to the Federal Trade Commission protesting “the misleading business practices of CareDash and BetterHelp,” together with the American Psychoanalytic Association and the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work. They are gathering signatures on a related petition, here: PsiAN Petition: Protecting Consumers and …

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Hospital Compliance With Federal Price Transparency Requirements: Updated Review of Madison, Wisconsin Hospitals

In August 2021 I reviewed Madison hospitals’ compliance with the Federal “Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule,” which requires hospitals to make their standard charges readily available to the public, in both “consumer-friendly” and “machine-readable” formats. Hospitals have now had an additional five months to come into compliance, and it’s time for an update to see …

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If You Are A Psychologist, What Are You Waiting For?

In the current context, an active discussion I have encountered is the supposed meagerness of the emergency refunds being paid to health care professionals by Medicare. I did a quick analysis. In 2017 (the most recent year for which data appear to be publicly available*), Medicare paid psychologists $490,497,820 for the diagnostic and treatment services …

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