The American Medical Association (AMA), in coordination with Mathematica, has been promoting their Physician Practice Information Survey (PPIS) since July 2023, and expanded their sample in October 2023. Despite their continuous efforts and reminders via email and mail to nearly 10,000 practices, the AMA has shared that the response rate for the PPI survey has been low. It is critical that radiology participates in this survey effort to provide updated and accurate practice costs that are representative of our specialty.
Based on information the American College of Radiology® (ACR®) received at the end of November 2023, approximately 230 diagnostic and interventional radiology physician-owned practices were randomly selected for survey; from those, only about eight responses have been received so far. Three nuclear medicine and 58 radiation oncology practices were also randomly surveyed, and no responses have been received. While it is possible that radiology practices are also captured as part of a sample of multispecialty practices, those response rates are also lacking.
The survey effort aims to collect practice cost information from the different medical specialties that will be shared with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and may impact the practice expense reimbursement for physicians. Current data utilized by CMS in the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule has not been updated in over 15 years.
One of the struggles Mathematica has encountered is the increased cybersecurity safeguards that may be flagging these PPIS emails as spam. The ACR encourages its members to connect with their practice administrators to identify whether their practice was selected for this survey effort. There are two different surveys — the practice survey and the physician survey, which is circulated to the physicians of the selected practices. The email information to search for is listed below.
• Practice Survey: The subject line for the PPI Survey invitation email will read, "American Medical Association requests your input on physician practice expense and patient care hours." Invitations and reminders about the PPI Survey, sent financial experts in the practice, will come from PPISurvey@mathematica-mpr.com.
• The Physician Survey: The subject line for the Physician Hours Survey invitation email will read, "Please help to update accurate physician payments." Invitations and reminders about the Physician Hours Survey, distributed to physicians, will come from PhysicianHoursSurvey@mathematica-mpr.com or from the practice directly.
If you determine that your practice was selected, we encourage you to complete the survey as soon as possible. If you find that the practice survey email was sent to an email address that is no longer in service, please reach out to Sherry Smith at the AMA to update the information and re-send the survey to appropriate individual.
The AMA sent a reminder email on Jan. 25 to the physician practices. The subject line of the email is “Reminder: The AMA needs your input to support fair and accurate physician payment.” The email came from PPISurvey@mathematica-mpr.com.
For more information, contact Stephanie Le, ACR Director, Economics and Health Policy.