Physician specialties that are most likely to send surprise balance bills to patients also have high list prices compared to what Medicare pays for those services, according to research highlighted on Aug. 1 by the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy.
The finding is based on 2016 CMS data.
Data shows that the median ratio of charges to Medicare allowed amounts was 5.51 for anesthesiology; 4.65 for emergency medicine; 4.02 for diagnostic radiology; and 3.43 for pathology in 2016.
Those medians are higher than medians for other types of physicians in the same year. According to the data, the median for all other specialists was 2.27 and the median for all primary care is 2.03.
Read more about the analysis here.
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