{{ The blizzard of surgeries-in-name-only is a symptom of a system that has long valued procedures far more than intellectual work in its payments to medical providers. That merits rethinking, and there are some hints that the incoming presidential administration might be interested in doing so.
The current payment calculation system has its origins in the late 1980s, when a team led by William Hsiao, an economist at Harvard University’s public health school created what’s called the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale, or RBRVS, to rationalize Medicare’s payments to doctors. It allocated reimbursement using a formula that included physician work, practice expense and malpractice expenses. It concluded “that the work per unit time (a measure of intensity) for invasive services is about three times that of evaluation/management.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/09/medical-billing-surgery/
intercst