Despite the recent regulation implemented by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to prevent hospitals from continuing to acquire physician practices so they can receive higher outpatient payments than those physicians receive in private practice, members of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission appear to think that more needs to be done to equalize physician payments regardless of where they provide outpatient services.

Or so MedPAC commissioners discussed during their public meeting in Washington, D.C. last week.

One commissioner observed that physicians appear to become less productive when their practice is acquired by a hospital. Others noted the added costs to Medicare when patients are treated at a hospital-based outpatient facility rather than a private physician’s office. In general, MedPAC members seemed “unimpressed” that CMS’s recent regulation alone will be enough to address the problem and that a better approach would be to reduce or eliminate the pay differentials between the two types of providers. MedPAC staff pointed to the $1.6 billion Medicare spent in 2015 on “evaluation and management “payments only to practices owned by hospitals.

Learn more about what MedPAC’s commissioners think about this issue and what they might do to try to address in this CQ Roll Call article presented by the Commonwealth Fund.