Last month, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed a rule that will cut Medicare payments for nearly all surgical procedures starting January 1, 2021. In some cases, surgeons will see up to 9% reductions in reimbursement for care. Cutting payments means less money for university medical centers like mine that fund critical clinical research, and now is hardly the time to be cutting money for medical research.
Academic hospitals are the backbone of the medical community. In addition to caring for patients, our hospitals provide education, mentoring, training, and a host of other essential services that don’t wind up on a balance sheet at the end of the year.
Every year, CMS makes cuts to Medicare payments that have a very substantial impact on our day-to-day operations, making it more difficult to deliver care to our patients and provide high-level education to medical students, residents, fellows, and