Potential Impact of Medicare Payment Reductions on Staffing of a Medical Practice

Nice report in January 2011, Dermatology World, that graphically represents the impact of Medicare payment reductions as a function of practice staffing and EHR implementation. In general, a 5-7% cuts in payments to physicians will translate to 20% of doctors reducing staff and 56% freezing staff hiring. And, also, a 5-7% reduction to physician payments will result in 33% of docs delaying EHR implementation and 29% indefinitely postponing.

Bottom line is private practice is small business and as soon as government intervenes with further reductions in payments it results in the unintended consequence of delaying other government initiatives such as EHR implementation and employment. Physicians have taken too big of a hit already and employ significant amounts of the labor burden. You cannot continually increase practice expense burden with regulatory obligations, etc and then at the same time make reductions in income and expect no impact on "initiatives". Docs are too tired and beat up to help here.