Medicare advisors recommend tying radiologist pay updates to inflation
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, which advises Congress on the program, is urging lawmakers to tie physician pay updates to inflation, a move long championed by the radiology community.
MedPAC met March 6 and 7 to discuss draft recommendation ahead of submitting the June report to Congress. Among policies discussed, commissioners highlighted the need to link physician pay increases with the Medicare Economic Index, a measure of practice cost inflation.
The American College of Radiology alerted members about the meeting in a news update published March 13. ACR noted that commissioners were “generally supportive of this work,” with the recommendation likely to be finalized in April.
Meanwhile, the American Medical Association also shared news of the update. MedPAC is recommending a 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule update to practices at the amount of MEI, which is 3.5%, minus 1 percentage point. Congress has frequently ignored the commission’s recommendations in the past.
“MedPAC was created to advise Congress. Now, will lawmakers listen?” AMA President Bruce A. Scott, MD, said in a statement March 13. “We welcome MedPAC’s help in highlighting the danger of doing nothing. The status quo is not an option.”
Members of the commission expressed concern that payment updates have been insufficient in the face of high inflation, AMA noted. The association believes the economics of treating Medicare patients are unsustainable, with concerns patients in rural and other underserved communities could see local practice closures.
MedPAC’s recommendations comes after lawmakers last week failed to address a 2.8% cut to the conversion factor used to calculate physician payments. This marks the fifth consecutive year of reimbursement reductions for docs, the AMA notes, with physicians seeing Medicare pay decline some 30% since 2001, when adjusting for inflation. Other providers such as hospitals have automatic annual payment increases, AMA said, but not physicians.
“This recommended [MedPAC] policy change is needed to ensure patients will have continued access to quality care. Medicare is broken,” Scott added. “Under the financial stress, burnout has become an occupational hazard for physicians. As these cuts pile up year after year, more and more physicians are closing their practices, leaving patients without access. It just makes sense that payment must keep pace with increasing costs.”
You can read the full 527-page report to Congress here and find a summary for the news media here.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.