RUC Committee and Payment for the Medical Home

The Disease Management Care Blog is pleased to announce that it has been named to HCPro’s Disease Management Advisor editorial advisory board. It always thought the monthly Advisor was a great way to keep up to date with happenings in the industry and the July 2008 issue did not disappoint.

As readers may recall, the DMCB was one of several blogs (ably summarized by Vince Kuraitis over at e-caremanagement) that weighed in on the RVS Update Committee’s (RUC) recent payment recommendations for the Medical Home. According to the Advisor, the ‘healthcare bloggers’ were ‘particularly concerned about the suggested commitment and pay structure.’ The Chair of the Committee was interviewed about this and noted ‘my understanding is there are some bloggers who don’t understand financial implications…’ He then goes on to explain why the RUC payment recommendations, if adopted, will heap some serious coin on the nation’s primary care physicians.

Indeed. The DMCB accepts we are all entitled to our opinions, but is far more interested in the role of the blogs in this chapter of the Medical Home. It seems that, except for the bloggers, no one else pulled on the unhappy pants and went through the recommendations a) in detail, b) with the primary care physicians’ needs first and foremost, and c) unwilling to simply take the RUC’s word for it.

If the exercise helped the Chair of the RUC be a little more forthcoming for the Advisor, then I say hooray for us blogs.