Brian Klepper
is a health care analyst and commentator, Principal and Chief Development Officer for WeCare TLC, LLC, an onsite primary care clinic and medical management firm based in Longwood, FL, and Managing Principal of Healthcare Performance Inc., a consulting practice based in Atlantic Beach, FL.
He is an active author and speaker, and has provided health care commentary to CBS Evening News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. He has published articles on Kaiser Health News, Medscape, Healthleaders, The New England Journal of Medicine, Modern Healthcare, Business Insurance and newspapers nationally.
He is a columnist for Medscape, focused on business of medicine and primary care, as well as a regular contributor to the Health Affairs Blog and other expert health care blogs. With his wife, he maintains Elaine’s Journey, which details their struggle against Primary Peritoneal (Ovarian) Cancer.
He recently served on the American Academy of Family Physicians’ Primary Care Services Valuation Task Force, and is a reviewer for Health Affairs and The Journal of Ambulatory Care Management. He serves on the Board of the Consortium for Southeast Hypertension Control (COSEHC), dedicated to translational medicine for vascular disease. He is an Advisor to the Lundberg Institute, the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, which advocates for medical homes, and the Center for Value Health Innovation, which helps business identify and implement approaches proven to improve quality while reducing cost.
In January 2011, with David C. Kibbe MD, he began a campaign, Replace the RUC!, that focuses on the most important driver of inappropriate health care cost. That effort has resulted in a lawsuit by six Augusta, GA primary care physicians against the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) over its longstanding inappropriate relationship with the AMA’s Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC).
In is spare time, Brian is an offshore sailor.
Contact him at 904.395.5530 (o), 904.343.2921 (c), bklepper@gmail.com.
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Tag Archives: AMA
Using Strong Carrots and Sticks To Drive Health Care That Works
Brian Klepper Posted 5/09/13 on Medscape Connect’s Care & Cost Blog On a recent call with a large manufacturer, my company’s team expected to describe how we develop primary care medical homes that become platforms for managing comprehensive health care clinical and financial risk. But … Continue reading
Why Aren’t Primary Care Physicians More Ticked off about the RUC? An Interview with Brian Klepper
Brandon Glenn Published 4/30/13 in Medical Economics If primary care physicians have a bigger enemy than the RUC, Brian Klepper, PhD, hasn’t heard about it. The American Medical Association’s (AMA) Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC) is a 31-physician panel that wields enormous influence with … Continue reading
The RUC, Health Care Finance’s Star Chamber, Remains Untouchable
Brian Klepper Posted 2/1/13 on The Health Affairs Blog On January 7, a federal appeals court rejected six Georgia primary care physicians’ (PCPs) challenge to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) 20-year, sole-source relationship with the secretive, specialist-dominated … Continue reading
The Most Powerful Health Care Group You’ve Never Heard Of
Brian Klepper and Paul Fischer Posted 8/06/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Blog Excessive health care spending is overwhelming America’s economy, but the subtler truth is that this excess has been largely facilitated by subjugating primary care. A wealth of … Continue reading
Medicare Physician Payment: A Hollow Victory for the RUC
Brian Klepper Posted 5/18/12 on The Health Affairs Blog Copyright 2012 by Project HOPE: The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc. On May 9th, William Nickerson, Senior Judge in the Southern Maryland Federal District Court, issued a 15 page ruling against the six Augusta, … Continue reading
Should Family Physicians Leave the RUC?
Brian Klepper Posted 3/30/12 on KevinMD Last June the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) sent a letter to the AMA’s Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC) demanding specific changes to the ways that the RUC conducts its business. Primary … Continue reading
Anti-RUC Suit Challenges Process for Setting Doc Pay Scales
Merrill Goozner Posted 10/25/11 on Gooz News Whither CMS? That’s the issue raised by Brian Klepper and David Kibbe in their post on the Health Affairs website this morning. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services faces a November deadline for answering a … Continue reading
Rethinking the Value of Medical Services
Brian Klepper and David C. Kibbe First posted 8/1/11 on The Health Affairs Blog Copyright ©2011 Health Affairs by Project HOPE – The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc. One of American politics’ most disingenuous conceits is that health care must cost what … Continue reading
A Primary Care Revolt
Richard Reece MD First published 4/17/11 on MedInnovation Blog An under-the-radar revolution is going on out there. It is a revolt of primary care physicians against the AMA and CMS. It is a request for parity with specialists. It is … Continue reading
Quit The RUC
BRIAN KLEPPER and DAVID KIBBE Originally published 1/21/11 on Kaiser Health News Recently, a Wall Street Journal expose and a New York Times column by Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt detailed how vast health care resources are steered by the American Medical Association’s … Continue reading
Still Unresolved: How We Pay Physicians, And The Primary Care Crisis
Wednesday’s news that physicians had, yet again, dodged the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) pay cut bullet – if you access the AMA article linked to above, be sure to read to the end to see how this new cost will be … Continue reading
