Changes in Physician Reimbursement by Medicare for Critical Care Services from 1998 to 2008

摘要

States (1, 2). Workforce projections from 15 years ago suggested an increasing shortage of critical care specialists to meet the required demands (3). To determine actual workforce trends for delivery of critical care services we examined the total Medicare billing and reimbursement and the distribution of the primary specialty of physicians receiving reimbursement for critical care medicine (CCM) services in 2008 and compared these results with previously published data on reimbursement from 1998 (4). Some of the results of this study have been previously reported in the form of an abstract (5).