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This report was initially published in 2019; this update was published in 2021 and includes clarification on RAND's definition of clean procedures. Medicare payment for most surgical procedures covers both the procedure and post-operative visits occurring within a global period of either ten or 90 days following the procedure. There have been concerns that fewer post-operative visits are provided than the number of post-operative visits considered when the procedure was valued. To help inform accurate valuation of procedures with global periods, Medicare required select practitioners to report on their post-operative visits beginning July 1, 2017. Medicare fee-for-service claims data from practitioners who billed Medicare for select procedure codes between July 1, 2017, and June 30, 2018, in the nine states where practitioners were required to report post-operative visits were analyzed. To correctly link a given procedure and post-operative visit(s), analyses were limited to procedures that did not occur within the global period of another procedure with a 10- or 90-day global period. There were 1.4 million procedures linked to 931,640 post-operative visits. The share of procedures with one or more associated post-operative visits reported was 3.7 percent for procedures with 10-day global periods and 70.9 percent for procedures with 90-day global periods. The ratios of observed to expected post-operative visits provided for procedures with 10- and 90-day global periods were 0.04 and 0.39, respectively. The low proportion of expected post-operative visits provided suggests the need to revalue procedures with a global period.

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"Consumer-Directed" Health Plans (CDHPs) combine high deductibles with personal medical accounts and are intended to reduce health care spending through greater patient cost sharing. Prior research shows that CDHPs reduce spending in the first year. However, there is little research on the impact of CDHPs over the longer term. We add to this literature by using data from 13 million individuals in 54 large US firms to estimate the effects of a firm offering CDHPs on health care spending up to three years post offer. We use a difference-in-differences analysis and to further strengthen identification, we balance observables within firm, over time by developing weights through a machine learning algorithm. We find that spending is reduced for those in firms offering CDHPs in all three years post. The reductions are driven by spending decreases in outpatient care and pharmaceuticals, with no evidence of increases in emergency department or inpatient care.

Zonder onderwerpscode: economie

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Medicare payments for most surgical procedures cover both procedures and post-operative visits occurring within a global period of either 10 or 90 days following procedures. There have been concerns that fewer post-operative visits are provided than the number of post-operative visits considered when the procedure was valued. To help inform accurate valuation of procedures with global periods, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) required select practitioners to report on post-operative visits after select procedures with 10- or 90-day global periods. The authors of this report summarize patterns of post-operative visits for procedures furnished during calendar year 2019, building on two prior reports that analyzed data for procedures furnished from July 1, 2017, through June 30, 2018, and for the entire 2018 calendar year. During calendar year 2019, 96.5 percent of procedures with 10-day global periods did not have an associated post-operative visit. Approximately two-thirds of procedures with 90-day global periods had an associated post-operative visit; however, the ratio of observed to expected post-operative visits provided for 90-day global period procedures was only 0.38. Underreporting of post-operative visits might be driving these low rates. However, in sensitivity analyses limited to practitioners who were actively reporting their post-operative visits, post-operative patterns were largely similar to the main analysis. Collectively, these findings suggest that many expected post-operative visits are not delivered and that underreporting is unlikely to fully explain the low ratio of expected post-operative visits provided.

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This report was initially published in 2019; this update was published in 2021 and includes clarification on RAND's definition of clean procedures. Medicare payment for many health care procedures covers not just the procedure itself but also most post-operative care over a fixed period of time (the "global period"). The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) sets payment rates assuming that a certain number and type of post-operative visits specific to each procedure typically occur. This report describes how CMS might use new claims-based data on the number of post-operative visits to adjust valuation for procedures with 10- and 90-day global periods. There are links between the number of bundled post-operative visits and the components of valuation addressed in this report: work, practice expense (PE), and malpractice relative value units (RVUs). There is some ambiguity regarding how a reduction in post-operative visits translates into changes in work RVUs. In contrast, a reduction in post-operative visits has clear implications on physician time and direct PE. Changes in physician work, physician time, and direct PE will in turn affect the allocation of pools of PE and malpractice RVUs to individual services. The idiosyncrasies of the resource-based relative value scale system used to determine payment for Medicare services result in some ambiguity about how procedures should be revalued to reflect reductions in post-operative visits. These results may inform further policy development around revaluation for global procedures.

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Medicare payments for most surgical procedures cover both procedures and post-operative visits occurring within a global period of either ten or 90 days following procedures. There have been concerns that fewer post-operative visits are provided than the number of post-operative visits considered when the procedure was valued. To help inform accurate valuation of procedures with global periods, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) required select practitioners to report on post-operative visits after select procedures with 10- or 90-day global periods. The authors of this report summarize patterns of post-operative visits for procedures furnished during calendar year 2018, building on a prior report that analyzed data for procedures with July 1, 2017, through June 30, 2018, service dates. During calendar year 2018, 96.5 percent of procedures with 10-day global periods did not have an associated post-operative visit. Approximately two-thirds of procedures with 90-day global periods had an associated post-operative visit; however, the ratio of observed to expected post-operative visits provided for 90-day global period procedures was only 0.38. Underreporting of post-operative visits might be driving these low rates. However, in sensitivity analyses limited to practitioners who were actively reporting their post-operative visits, post-operative patterns were largely similar to the main analysis. Collectively, these findings suggest that a large share of expected post-operative visits are not delivered, and that underreporting is unlikely to fully explain the low ratio of expected post-operative visits provided.