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.
Pages
Tag Archives: Primary Care
Physicians, Health Systems and the Drive for Market Dominance
Brian Klepper Posted 5/23/13 on Medscape Connect’s Care & Cost Blog Several physicians have reached out recently to discuss attractive employment offers from health systems. They are invariably conflicted. They understand the trade-offs, that they’ll give up the autonomy they’ve become accustomed … 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 Wrong Battles
Brian Klepper Posted 9/20/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Blog This week the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) issued a new report describing its vision of primary care’s future. Not surprisingly, the report talks about medical homes, with patient-centered, team-based care. More … Continue reading
Demanding More From Medical Homes
Brian Klepper Published 9/4/12 in Medical Home News Never confuse motion with action. Benjamin Franklin A reporter called the other day to tell me that several local health systems now had medical homes. “I don’t think so,” I said. She was emphatic. … Continue reading
Why Medical Management Will Re-Emerge
Brian Klepper Posted 7/31/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Several years ago I had dinner with a woman who had served in the late 1990s as the national Chief Medical Officer of a major health plan. At the time, she said, … Continue reading
Creating Value-Based Incentives for Primary Care
Brian Klepper and David Kibbe Posted 6/2/11 on The Health Affairs Blog In a remarkable recent interview, Donald Berwick MD, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), eloquently described his vision of value-based health care. Paying for value … 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
Fixing America’s Health Care Reimbursement System
Brian Klepper First published 3/3/11 on Kaiser Health News A tempest is brewing in physician circles over how doctors are paid. But calming it will require more than just the action of physicians. It will demand the attention and influence … Continue reading
Time To Quit RUC-ing Up The Health Care System
Carol Gentry First published 02/28/11 on Health News Florida If we value our family doctors, why do we pay them so much less than specialists? The Medicare payment system has been very good to physicians who use tools (scans, scalpels, … 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
