Susan Dentzer, MS
About the Author
Susan Dentzer, MS
Latest Work
Why the Medicare physician fee schedule is sheer madness
Amid the complexities of U.S. healthcare, there is probably no construct that’s more byzantine than the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) — the program’s elaborate system of paying physicians and other clinicians (including nurse practitioners, physician assistants and clinical psychologists) for more than 10,000 medical services.a In 2022, the schedule drove about $71.2 billion in…
Susan Dentzer: Why we have reached a tipping point on pharmaceutical spending
Author Malcolm Gladwell famously wrote in a 2000 book about the phenomenon of “tipping points” — those moments when “critical mass, the threshold, [or] the boiling point” is reached and change occurs “not gradually but at one dramatic moment.”a One historical case in point: the collapse of the former Soviet Union, which, though building for years,…
How to design a national strategy to end the healthcare workforce crisis
Signs that the United States is in the midst of a healthcare workforce crisis are everywhere: A mounting national problem While exacerbated by the pandemic, the crunch has built for decades. The biggest driver is demographics: By 2029, one in four Americans will be 65 or older, translating into declining labor force participation, including in…
Susan Dentzer: Is consolidation in healthcare the work of modern-day robber barons — or the result of overdue reengineering?
The most successful industrialists of America’s Gilded Age were often skewered by contemporary critics as being robber barons. A new generation of naysayers wants to recycle the old rhetoric, this time targeting organizations focused on healthcare: The critics’ clear message: Big money is helping healthcare get bigger, and it’s a bad deal all around. Many…
Is consolidation in healthcare the work of modern-day robber barons — or the result of overdue reengineering?
he most successful industrialists of America’s Gilded Age were often skewered by contemporary critics as being robber barons. A new generation of naysayers wants to recycle the old rhetoric, this time targeting organizations focused on healthcare: The critics’ clear message: Big money is helping healthcare get bigger, and it’s a bad deal all around. Many…
Susan Dentzer: Perspectives differ on Medicare’s 2 houses
Drive through rural New England and you’ll see them: “connected farms,” cobbling together houses, sheds, barns and outbuildings in disjointed structures. Often centuries old, they are at once unlovely, yet exude charm. To me, they’re a perfect metaphor for the jumble of Medicare. How else does one describe a program that baffles new enrollees as…