Increases in Primary Care Physician Income Due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010--Continued Tweaking of Physician Payment

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) authorizes several changes to the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS) system that are designed to increase primary care physician personal income and reduce geographic variation in primary care payment. In this brief, the ACA-authorized primary care payment adjustments are modeled in a prototypical rural primary care practice to assess both the potential impact on physician personal income and the likelihood that the changes will achieve the desired policy outcome.