ÐÇ¿ÕÈë¿Ú

Home care providers may be on shaky ground when lawmakers start looking for funding sources to finance another fix to Medicare's physician payment rates.

Last June, Congress voted to not only stave off a 21 percent cut to docs' Medicare pay, but to increase their rates by 2.2 percent. However, that vote kept the cuts at bay only through Nov. 30 -- and that date is right around the corner.

Effective Dec. 1, physicians' Medicare pay rate is set to drop by more than 23 percent, unless Congress intervenes to reverse the cuts. Add to that the fact that 2011 payments to docs are due to drop by another 6.5 percent starting Jan. 1, and medical practices will be putting the full court press on their elected representatives to find a reimbursement fix for them.

Thanks to the November elections and their related congressional recesses, it will take some quick wrangling to undo the Medicare payment issues before the Nov. 30 deadline.

The American Medical Association "is calling on Congress to immediately address this impending crisis when they return to Washington after the November elections," AMAPresident Cecil B. Wilson says in a release. "Without action to stop the cuts, Congress will create a Medicare meltdown with access to care threatened for seniors and the baby boomers who will begin entering Medicare in January.

Ultimately, a permanent solution must be passed to fix this broken system, but Congress must first stop the 30 percent payment cuts threatening seniors' access to care now."

Home care providers also need to be lobbying their representatives to fix home care payment problems, the National Association for Home Care & Hospice says. A recent poll in "battleground" congressional districts found that three-fourths of likely voters oppose a recent proposal from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that would cut nearly $20 billion from Medicare home care spending over the next decade.