Payment disparities based on site of service were another universal complaint at the hearing. “My clinic is on the campus of a major hospital in Dallas,” said Rick Snyder, MD, a cardiologist in independent practice. “When I perform an echocardiogram in my office, Medicare pays my practice a technical fee of about $123. My patient’s copay for that fee is roughly $24. But if a patient walks out my door and takes the elevator down one floor to a hospital outpatient lab in the exact same building, the cost of [that echocardiogram] for Medicare and for the patient more than quadruples. That’s what I call magic and a very disturbing elevator ride.”
The the full article at MedPage Today