{"id":5269,"date":"2013-07-21T19:40:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-22T01:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5269"},"modified":"2013-07-21T19:40:32","modified_gmt":"2013-07-22T01:40:32","slug":"how-a-secretive-panel-uses-data-that-distorts-doctors%e2%80%99-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5269","title":{"rendered":"How a secretive panel uses data that distorts doctors\u2019 pay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/economy\/how-a-secretive-panel-uses-data-that-distorts-doctors-pay\/2013\/07\/20\/ee134e3a-eda8-11e2-9008-61e94a7ea20d_story.html\">Peter Whoriskey and Dan Keating<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When Harinath Sheela was busiest at his gastroenterology clinic, it seemed he could bend the limits of time.<br \/>\nTwelve colonoscopies and four other procedures was a typical day for him, according to Florida records for 2012. If the American Medical Association\u2019s assumptions about procedure times are correct, that much work would take about 26 hours. Sheela\u2019s typical day was nine or 10.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have experience,\u201d the Yale-trained, Orlando-based doctor said. \u201cI\u2019m not that slow; I\u2019m not fast. I\u2019m thorough.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This seemingly miraculous proficiency, which yields good pay for doctors who perform colonoscopies, reveals one of the fundamental flaws in the pricing of U.S. health care, a Washington Post investigation has found.<\/p>\n<p>Unknown to most, a single committee of the AMA, the chief lobbying group for physicians, meets confidentially every year to come up with values for most of the services a doctor performs.<\/p>\n<p>Those values are required under federal law to be based on the time and intensity of the procedures. The values, in turn, determine what Medicare and most private insurers pay doctors.<\/p>\n<p>But the AMA\u2019s estimates of the time involved in many procedures are exaggerated, sometimes by as much as 100 percent, according to an analysis of doctors\u2019 time, as well as interviews and reviews of medical journals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peter Whoriskey and Dan Keating: When Harinath Sheela was busiest at his gastroenterology clinic, it seemed he could bend the limits of time. Twelve colonoscopies and four other procedures was a typical day for him, according to Florida records for 2012. If the American Medical Association\u2019s assumptions about procedure times are correct, that much work [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5269"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}