Marty Neltner

We work with medical oncologists/hematologists across the country in both the private practice and hospital settings. Based on our experience, I'd like to point out a couple of key flaws in the current Medicare code interpretations.

Nationally recognized oncology consultant takes a look at Medicare coding. Seems like the devil is in the details when it comes to Medicare…

The Obama administration is pushing for universal EMR adoption. Sounds like a good idea. But are EMRs ready for prime time?

In this exclusive CancerNetwork Blog podcast, nationally regarded healthcare specialist, Marty Neltner, talks about, among other things, how to bring value into an oncology practice.

Physicians regularly miscalculate their non- Medicare fees, which means that revenue is slipping away. Have you reviewed your fee schedules lately to determine if you’re getting proper reimbursement for all your services? Now is a great time to take a look and make appropriate changes for 2009. Here are some steps to determine if private payers are reimbursing you at a fair rate.

Basically, the manufacturer list price for darbepoetin is so high that it is nearly impossible to buy it as a single-source drug. Instead, companies are creatively bundling drugs, putting physicians under contractual obligation to purchase drugs as a package in order to get the best price and get the “rebate.”

In today’s healthcare environment, physicians are compensated for the volume of services rendered as well as ancillary services (MRI, PET, CT, catheterization, and other test orders).

As oncology drug costs to payers continue to soar-almost $200 billion annually and growing-new market forces are combining to allow health plans to aggressively manage oncology drug costs, which means less profit for community doctors.

I recently attended a healthcare conference titled “Leadership Summit on Evidence-Based Medicine” in Alexandria, Virginia. As you know, private industry, insurance companies, and the government are trying to develop an evidence-based medicine approach to help check the growth of healthcare expenditures.

An oncologist called me recently and said, “I am mad as heck and I am not taking this anymore.” He is not making 6% on the chemotherapy agents he administers; he is making 2%.