Doctors and Medicare

It seems that private practice doctors and hospitals get paid differently for Medicare patients under the current system. Due to this distinction within the system, private practice doctors seem to order a lot more tests on expensive machinery than do hospitals. The writer of this Op-Ed (a doctor himself) advocates bringing both medical care facilities (private practices and hospitals) under the same umbrella with regard to payment methods. He says that instead of being paying private practitioners based on the number and complexity of services rendered to a patient, Medicare should pay them the same way it pays hospitals, by "case rate", which determines the payment to the hospital for a Medicare patient based on the underlying illness. I am sure this has its own downfalls; for instance, what about patients whose illnesses are misdiagnosed (or worse, undiagnosed). But, ultimately, I wonder if this would not be a less wasteful way of paying doctors for taking care of Medicare patients.

[via NYT]