It begins: Doctors increasingly reluctant to accept Medicare patients

But statistics also suggest many doctors have more than made up for the erosion in the value of their Medicare fees by dramatically increasing the volume of services they provide – performing not just a greater number of tests and procedures, but also more complex versions that allow them to charge Medicare more money.

From 2000 to 2008, the volume of services per Medicare patient rose 42 percent. Some of this was because of the increasing availability of sophisticated treatments that undoubtedly save lives. Some was because of doctors practicing “defensive medicine” – ordering every conceivable test to shield themselves from malpractice lawsuits down the line.

“Then you have doctors who order an MRI for an unremarkable headache or at the first sign of back pain,” said Robert Berenson, a Commissioner of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent congressional agency. “It’s pretty well documented that it doesn’t help patients to have those scans done in these cases. But if you have the machine in your office … why not?”

Whatever the cause, the explosion in the volume of services provided helps explain why Medicare’s total payments to doctors per patient rose 51 percent from 2000 to 2008.