Reduced Medicare and Medicaid payments are having more physicians considering reducing those patient bases, according to Medscape's "Physician Compensation Report" for 2023.
Sixty-five percent of physicians surveyed said they would continue treating current Medicare or Medicaid patients and take on new ones, according to the report. Medscape said it is the lowest percentage it has seen in its annual compensation reports. Five years ago, 71 percent of physicians said they would continue treating current Medicare or Medicaid patients and take on new ones.
For the report, Medscape collected responses from 10,011 physicians across more than 29 specialties. The data was collected between Oct. 7, 2022, and Jan. 17, 2023.
Eight percent of physicians surveyed said they would not take on new Medicare patients, and 5 percent said they would not take new Medicaid patients.
Four percent said they will stop treating some or all of their current Medicare patients and will not take on new ones, and 3 percent said the same about Medicaid patients.
Twenty-two percent said they have not yet decided how they will move forward regarding Medicare and Medicaid patients, according to the report.