ROCHESTER, MINNESOTA– Mayo Clinic scrambled to blunt criticism over its decision to stop accepting Medicare patients at a facility in Glendale, Arizona.
A post on Mayo’s Health Policy blog said some media reports incorrectly reported the organization was not seeing any Medicare patients in the state. Instead, Mayo’s decision impacts patients who see “only primary care office visits for the five Mayo family practice physicians at this site.”
You know the hospital means business when it breaks out the italics.
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Oddly, Mayo seemed to suggest it could change its mind: The physicians “opted out of Medicare as part of a Mayo Clinic time-limited trial that will be reviewed at its conclusion.”
Yet the organization devotes the rest of the rather lengthy entry explaining why it loses money on Medicare patients.
“Decades of underfunding and paying for volume rather than value in Medicare have led us to this decision. Providers who do fewer unnecessary tests and services are paid the least, and they are the doctors and hospitals which will go out of business first if we don’t change the payment system.”
Mayo sounds pretty resolute to me. I also doubt Glendale will be the only facility to face cutbacks.
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“This is one of several options we are exploring to address the Medicare shortfall situation,” the blog says.