Radiology lost $627M in anticipated Medicare payment during 2020’s first half

Diagnostic radiology sustained a roughly $627 million or 22% drop in anticipated Medicare reimbursement during the first half of 2020 due to COVID-19, according to a new analysis published Wednesday.

Across all physician types, the cumulative decrease in physician services spending totaled $9.4 billion (19%) as stay-at-home orders and virus fears kept people away from the healthcare sector. Coupled with increased expenditures on protective equipment and other coronavirus-related costs, physicians are in a perilous position, the AMA said.

“The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has placed significant financial stress on medical practices as expenses have spiked and revenues have dropped,” AMA President Susan Bailey, MD, said March 3. “For practices that have struggled to remain viable as the pandemic stretches on, many will face a difficult and precarious road to recovery.”

For the report, AMA chief economist Kurt Gillis, PhD, analyzed Medicare claims data exclusive to physician services in 2020. He found that spending for imaging, procedures and tests continued plummeting into mid-April, dropping upward of 70% below anticipated 2020 spending. By the end of June, imaging and evaluation and management payments were still down 10%, researchers noted.

Based on historical trends, diagnostic radiology Medicare spending should have hit $2.795 billion in 2020’s first half but landed at $2.168 billion instead. Imaging certainly was not alone, as Medicare’s actual allotment toward physician services dropped across all service types, settings, specialties or states, Gillis reported. Physical therapists saw the biggest decrease in expected over actual Medicare pay at $706 million (34%), while New York was the hardest hit state, with physicians there losing $964 million (27%) between January and June.

You can read the full 15-page report for free here and find more about the pandemic’s impact on imaging here.

Marty Stempniak

Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic. 

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