By Landon Hall, Orange County Register
When Dr. Minh Nguyen got a phone call from a reporter telling him he’d been paid $11 million from Medicare in 2012, he was shocked.
Dr. Minh Nguyen of Orange Coast Oncology and Hematology in Newport Beach was among a select few physicians around the country who found themselves struggling Wednesday to explain why they’d been paid a disproportionate amount from the federal health plan for seniors. In an unprecedented release of data, the Center for Medicaid Services published records on 880,000 non-hospital providers, including the treatments they completed and the money they were reimbursed by the government. PHOTO: PAUL RODRIGUEZ, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
“I didn’t make $11 million in 2012. I’d be ecstatic if I made $11 million. I’d be ecstatic if I made a million dollars in 2012, let alone $11 million. But it’s nowhere near the truth,” said Nguyen, an oncologist at Orange Coast Oncology Hematology in Newport Beach.
Nguyen was among a select few physicians around the country who found themselves struggling Wednesday to explain why they’d been paid a disproportionate amount from the federal health plan for seniors. In an unprecedented release of data, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published records on 880,000 non-hospital providers, including the treatments they completed and the money they were reimbursed by the government.
Nguyen, 39, turned up 11th nationally on that list and No. 1 among individual doctors in California. He was paid $11.28 million in 2012 to treat 793 Medicare patients. After patient costs, like co-pays and deductibles, as well as any payments from other insurers, are deducted, he was reimbursed a total of $9.02 million from CMS that year. That’s far above the average per physician for his sub-specialty, oncology-hematology, which is less than $500,000.
Nguyen explained that, in the practice where he works, he’s the physician who helps cancer patients as they’re given intravenous chemo medications at the Newport Beach site. The other four doctors in the practice see patients at another location, but all prescriptions for various medicines go through Nguyen. So all the Medicare claims are filed with his billing number.
What’s more, those medicines are staggeringly expensive: One he prescribes is ipilimumab, known by its brand name of Yervoy. The drug, which is made by Bristol-Myers Squibb, has been shown to prolong the lives of patients with late-stage melanoma. But it costs about $100,000 for the standard course of four treatments.
“I’m asked to pay these drug companies $100,000 to get this drug in the office to treat the patient,” Nguyen said. “Meanwhile, I’m waiting afterwards to see if Medicare, or which ever private insurance it might be, is going to reimburse me for it. So it’s a large burden that is put on the shoulders of physicians to bear.
Read the full story by Landon Hall from Orange County Register.
