Medicare Reimbursement Alert

We realize that health care costs and access to quality medical services are very important issues for you and your family. We ask for your support in contacting your Congressional Representative regarding your concerns related to health care reform; your voice counts.

At the present time, if Congress does NOT take action, reimbursement for Medicare services is scheduled to be reduced by 21.2% on March 1, 2010. The vote will now take place the end of March. To put this in perspective, the proposed rates are 8% less than what the rates were in 1992 while the cost of running a practice has gone up by 50%. At the current level, reimbursement from Medicare, according to the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, only covers about 50% of the cost of providing medical services.

If this cut goes into effect, it will become very difficult for all of your physicians to accept new Medicare patients. It may also limit the number of available appointments for existing Medicare patients. Likewise, because many insurance carriers set their reimbursement rates proportional to Medicare, it is possible that your physicians may not be able to participate in all insurance plans in the future. At present, HeartFirst does not limit access to Medicare patients, but if the cuts are enacted, we may need to rethink our participation.

We urge you to contact your Congressional Representative to express your concerns about this situation. You can do this by going to http://www.congress.org where you can easily identify your representatives by inserting your zip codes in the "Get Involved" locator box. Once you insert your zip code, all of your national and local representatives are listed with their web site, contact form and national and local telephone numbers.

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