ISMA joined dozens of other state medical associations and national medical specialty societies last week in signing on to an AMA letter calling for Congress to stop a 3.37% Medicare physician payment cut, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2024. 

The combination of ever-increasing practice costs and long-stagnated Medicare payment rates has become unsustainable. 

Medicare physician pay has declined 26% from 2001 to 2023 when accounting for inflation, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently acknowledged that the cost of running a practice will increase by 4.6% in 2024.
 
“If Congress does not act by the end of the year to stop this impending payment cut, many physicians will be forced to reduce available health care services, cut office hours, or even forgo treating Medicare patients altogether,” the letter states. “America’s physicians and their patients deserve better.”

Read the letter here.