Physician Payment and Physician Behavior

Physician Payment and Physician Behavior
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Policy makers and researchers have held the belief that better payment to physicians will in turn reflect the monetary value in the services they provide. Accomplishing this goal will however need more evidence to support the belief than the current platform they are working on. Moreover, an insight in the overall service deliverance in specific services will be of great advantage to develop an understanding of the factors that affect the whole procedure. In addition to that, an understanding of the physician's behavior in respect to some services will be critical to develop services that will be of significant benefit to service provision.
In the early 1990s, Health Medicare adopted a system that would create both equality and uniformity between public and private health care. The Physician health fee, where the prices were based on two elements; physicians' time and effort in the service and professional liability. A conversion factor was also devised to give value in terms of dollars. This is when the congress adopted the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), as part of the Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1997, was introduced to calculate the annual rate of medical expenditure. The plan was in 2001 noted to be working while the medical benefits were not declining. It was however noted that the system proved an uncertain feature for physician's payments. The system aimed a fee cut every year (Physician Payment and Physician Behavior: A Complex Interaction (n.d.).
Redesigning the payment system forced the groups involved to examine the then current working models. One of the problems that face the current medical system is instabilities due to the inability to count consistent payment levels. In addition to this, free services will merely increase volume value of services. Short and long term options as outlined by the Health Affairs indicate that the congress has no option. This is because a delay in the compensation procedure could lead to the physicians shunning from delivering services to the m...