Costly Medicare changes

By this time tomorrow, some 2,400 Americans will be dead from cardiovascular disease, which takes more lives each year than cancer, accidents and diabetes combined.

By this time next year, though, rates of cardiovascular deaths may well have increased significantly if proposed Medicare regulations are implemented.

America's cardiologists are now waging a two-front war to save our patients' lives. The first is against heart disease, a battle we increasingly are winning. Advancements in cardiology during the past 10 years have reduced heart-related deaths and the severity of heart-related illness by 27 percent. That's important because the urgent need for this lifesaving specialty will increase 60 percent in the next 15 years as baby boomers advance in age and because the current shortage of cardiologists is expected to worsen over that time.

The second front in this life-and-death campaign is our fight to ensure that Medicare and Congress put patients first, ahead of well-intentioned but ultimately harmful changes that would reduce access to the best care possible.

There are three keys to successfully treating a patient with heart disease: speed, access to the latest technology and access to specialized expertise. Unfortunately, certain changes now under consideration would cause lengthy delays in diagnosis and treatment, limit patient access to technology and, by forcing some physicians to curtail services, severely limit access to care.

For example, Medicare officials and some reformers have focused on the ownership and use of important diagnostic equipment in a misguided attempt to generate cost reductions.

Their answer to controlling spending is to limit or eliminate a physician's ability to use in-office imaging equipment or reduce reimbursement to the point that it's simply not feasible for physician offices to use critically important diagnostic tools.

Patients would be forced to travel elsewhere for imaging services, hitting thousands of rural patients hardest. It would increase both beneficiaries' out-of-pocket costs and Medicare's costs overall, since it is more expensive to provide imaging services in a hospital setting. And it would place yet another person between the patient and the physician who knows the patient best.

Having the diagnostic tools in a physician's office saves precious time and helps ensure an accurate diagnosis and a better outcome for the patient. Today's advanced imaging equipment is as fundamental as our stethoscope in diagnosing and treating cardiac disease.

To win the fight against cardiac disease, patients need access to the right cardiac care with the right tools at the right time.

We support strong credentialing and accreditation programs to make certain that diagnostic equipment is used properly and cost effectively. We support the use of criteria to help physicians determine which test is appropriate based on a patient's symptoms and medical history. We support disclosure of physician ownership in hospitals to promote transparency.

When it comes to health care reform, cardiologists have only one condition: Any changes must put the patient first. Unfortunately, the changes that would affect cardiology in proposed Medicare regulations put saving money ahead of saving lives. And that's something millions of Americans who suffer from cardiovascular disease can live without.