Chip Kahn Is Cautious About Part B Demonstration

The newly proposed Medicare Part B payment demonstration met immediate criticism from some in the healthcare industry. Chip Kahn, president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals, is also very hesitant about the demonstration and worries that it might be premature.

Transcript (modified)

What is your take on the newly proposed Medicare Part B payment demonstration?

It’s going to take a lot of analysis on our part to see whether or not, from a hospital standpoint, this is going to be good for the patients and helpful in terms of the decision making in hospitals. And it’s very complicated.

What worries me about this is that there is some imperative to get this demonstration applied nationally and I think it’s premature. I think we need to test this out because no matter how good the analytics on the implications of it, until you actually test out a new program you’re not going to know how it’s really going to work and what the unintended consequences of it may be.

And I’m really reticent. From our standpoint this is too different from the way the payment is done now for us to just jump in. We’re really going to have to do a lot of analysis on it.