Resolving The Tug-Of-War Between Medicare’s National And Local Coverage
- 1 July 2004
- journal article
- Published by Health Affairs (Project Hope) in Health Affairs
- Vol. 23 (4) , 108-123
- https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.23.4.108
Abstract
Medicare's decentralized local coverage policy process leads to policy variation, raising serious equity and quality issues. The policy debate resembles a tug-of-war, with advocates favoring nationalization of all local policies or arguing for the status quo. We extensively analyzed thousands of local policies and surveyed Medicare's contractors. We found that all local policies are not the same. We classified them based on where they fall on the diffusion curve. The classification by type allows for reallocation to the national or local process to improve the decisions and satisfy Medicare's equity and quality goals.Keywords
This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit:
- Focus On Locus: Evolution Of Medicare’s Local Coverage PolicyHealth Affairs, 2003
- Evidence-Based Coverage PolicyHealth Affairs, 2001