Strategies for Reforming Medicare's Physician Payments

On July 1, 1985, the Secretary of Health and Human Services must submit to Congress a report on "the advisability and feasibility of providing for determining the amount of payments for physicians' services to hospital inpatients based on the DRG diagnosis-related groups type classification of the discharges of those inpatients."1 Responsibility for drafting this report has been assigned to the associate administrator for policy and the Office of Research of the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA). Our work on this report has made it clear that the concept of physician DRGs (MDDRGs) is best evaluated in comparison with other possible . . .