“This is devastating to us,” says Dr. Reznicek, whose Cadillac Urology Practice is 42-43 percent Medicare. And he’s not just talking about the ruinous 21.2 percent Medicare pay cut, which would stay in place if Congress cannot pass a fee fix.
To ward off actually paying the huge reductions, in effect since March 1, CMS has frozen payments on all claims it receives in the first 10 business days of the month. For Dr. Reznicek, that means no Medicare payments for two weeks and, if Congress still can’t deal with the fee cut, maybe longer.
Medicare payment freezes are all too familiar to him. This is the third time in four months, he says, that such freezes have taken effect. CMS froze payments for three weeks in January in conjunction with Congressional debate on the fee fix and for 10 days in December to deal with a budget issue, he says.
Dr. Reznicek’s two-physician practice, the only urology provider in a six-county area, has begun limiting numbers of new Medicare patients. While Cadillac Urology Practice will still see all patients already scheduled, it is limiting new patients to three per week per provider, down from about seven, and is limiting surgeries to emergent cases on existing Medicare patients.
Many of his Medicare patients have cancer, requiring expensive treatments that won’t be covered in the short term. Depending on how long the payment freeze continues, Dr. Reznicek says he may have to take out a bank loan. “We can’t cut the hours of office staff because then they could not pay their mortgages,” he says.
“Medicare has become an unreliable payor,” he says. Captive to the huge federal payor for more than one-third of his bills, Dr. Reznicek has decided to look harder for private-pay patients.
Contact Leigh Page at leigh@beckersasc.com.
