Medicare Agonistes

bundling Medicare payment

Bundling is a hot topic these days, although not necessarily a welcome topic.

Bundling complex cases requires some serious negotiating and fee setting among the parties, not to mention convincing the hospital (which controls the bundle) to accept or reinsure the risks.

Physicians generally see bundling as a means of forcing physicians to become subservient to the dreaded hospital management. They also see bundling as a surefire means of the feds cutting physician incomes using a surrogate (instead of using the politcal process directly).

It is coming, and we will need to see if the implementation is botched.