Below are three pages from the latest ACS (American College of Surgeons) Bulletin. I apologize for the quality, but it was a pdf file and I couldn't copy it directly; these are screen shots. For any readers who are surgeons, I also apologize for picking at a scab.
Assuming it's not really readable, let me explain. It's three pages of codes and explanations for how to bill for lymph node biopsy (SLN: sentinal lymph node biopsy) in various scenarios with or without various breast procedures. Let me also add: improper coding, as far as Medicare is concerned, is a felony. Fraud. Punishable by very heavy fines, and imprisonment. For nearly any other operation, there are similar rules, exceptions, combinations, suggestions, complications.
Now consider this: unless over-ridden by Congress, there are scheduled payment decreases in the pipeline for Medicare reimbursement, to the tune of about 16% in the next year. That's, of course, after lowering payments by about two-thirds since I first went into practice, and making it illegal (felonious, of course) to charge for the difference between one's "fees" (as if one's personal setting of a fee has any meaning) and Medicare payments.
Despite the inevitable comments that doctors are overpaid, ego-driven, profit-taking purulent pustules of putrefaction, isn't it logical to think that we're heading for trouble? Is it reasonable to think there's a point, for even the most selfless of people in any walk of life, at which the graphs of increasing hassles and of decreasing rewards (monetary and otherwise!) cross, and drive current workers out and turn away future ones?
Stir in and mix thoroughly: the projected shortfalls in the future number of surgeons required to fill the needs of the US.
Trouble. And that starts with T and that rhymes with R and stands for retirement.
