Doctors across California and in two other Western states are owed millions of dollars in backlogged Medicare reimbursements, leading some physicians to turn away elderly patients and pushing others to the brink of bankruptcy.
In the most extreme cases, doctors have not been paid since February. Others are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars. Doctors who serve high numbers of Medicare patients say they are defaulting on rent, laying off staff and begging drug suppliers not to stop shipments. One cardiologist said she's even resorted to doing the office laundry to cut costs.
Medicare owes Dr. Tim Ganey and his Bay Area practice of oncologists $750,000 in outstanding claims. He sought grace periods from vendors for his drug payments, but now he's running out of time. He won't be able to order more chemotherapy treatments unless he pays his bill.
"The things that we're dealing with, they're not elective things," Ganey said. "They're pertinent to people either fighting their cancer or being cured of their cancer."
He now faces two options: take out more personal loans to buy the drugs himself or start admitting patients to a hospital.
The holdup is twofold. By May, doctors were supposed to be using a new universal identification number assigned by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Without the new number, which is like a Social Security number, doctors can't get reimbursed.
Then, as scores of doctors still waited for those numbers, in September the federal agency switched to a new claim processor for its 90,000 California providers. The move to Palmetto GBA in South Carolina, part of a national effort to reform Medicare contractors, compounded the billing issues and left even doctors who had their universal identification numbers waiting months for reimbursement.
In some cases, the problem is as simple as a change of address not being processed. Dr. Daniel Marcus moved from Suite 404 to 414 in his Marina del Rey office and as a result has not been paid since May.
"This is just a complete disaster," said Dr. Dev Gnanadev, medical director and chairman of the Department of Surgery at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton and president of the California Medical Assn. "I know people who have turned down their office to minimal size. Some are even considering closing temporarily. If you don't get paid, then you're in deep trouble."
