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July 2009
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Volume 3, Issue 13
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InforMed Society
Offical E-Newsletter of the Medical Society
Keeping you InforMed about the latest health care news!
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Taking the temperature of the membership on health care reform
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As part of our ongoing efforts to reach out to the membership and promote participation,
the Medical Society is presenting this poll to engage in and respond to the biggest issue
facing medicine in years - health care reform. While we recognize that this poll is not
intended to be statistically significant nor in the proper format to imply statistic
validation, it is the intent to get a general sense of the Medical Society memberships'
feelings on the subject and to elicit responses from those individuals that health care
reform impacts most - the physician.
The rules are simple. The poll will close on July 31st, 2009. All responses including names will be confidential
and only utilized for entry into the prize drawing. The first 25 respondents will receive two (2) free movie passes
and all entrants will be entered into a drawing for a $100 gift card to Durant's Restaurant in downtown Phoenix.
The drawing will take place on Monday, August 3rd. The winner of the $100 gift card will be notified by email,
phone or contact information provided.
To participate, click here
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ER malpractice standard raised
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Patients who want to sue their emergency-room doctors due to medical errors now will have a higher hurdle to clear.
A bill signed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer means emergency-room patients must prove there is "clear and convincing" evidence that medical errors by emergency health-care workers led to injury. Read more...
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only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other
woes of mankind, is wisdom.
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Featured Business
Central
Application Service (CAS) was designed to help practitioners and their
staffs save time and money. We have streamlined the paperwork process
surrounding credentialing.
For more information, please visit ezcas.com |
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Got an idea??
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Please join us in October for the Society's annual meeting! We are currently canvassing different venues in the Valley, and would love to elicit fun/creative ideas from our members! If you have suggestions, please email Claudia Bair at cbair@mcmsonline.com.
Thanks!
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ACT Kids Health Fair - VOLUNTEER!
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WE NEED VOLUNTEERS!!Thousands
of underprivileged kids are given a better chance at life through the ACT Head
Start Health Fair. The Medical Society
along with a variety of other agencies will hold the one-day health
screening at the Phoenix University School
(previously Phoenix
Preparatory Academy)
on Saturday - September 12, 2009.
The
Society needs 50 physicians, physician assistant and nurse practitioner volunteers;
20-30 medical volunteers and 35-45 non-medical volunteers to help with
this very worthwhile project. Three
shifts are available to physicians, physician assistants and nurse
practitioners - 7:00 am to 12:00 pm,
11:45 am to 3:30 pm, and an all day shift. Others are required to serve for the
entire event (7:00 am - 3:30 pm),
due to the training involved. All volunteers
will be asked to stay for their entire shift.
A free lunch will be included.
Portions
of the exam can only be performed under the supervision of a physician,
physician assistant or nurse practitioner.
Each are assigned an exam booth and an assistant. All the paperwork and releases are collected
beforehand by the Head Start staff so that you can concentrate on what you do
best - treating the patient. It
is not necessary to be a primary care physician or a pediatrician. The examinations are general in nature and
most subspecialties qualify to perform them.
We also
encourage you to involve your staff (age
18 or older) in this
event. Nurses and medical students are
assigned to a booth to assist the examiners or to take blood pressures.
Non-medical volunteers will help with heights and weights, assist with traffic,
entertainment and child supervision. We are especially in need of bilingual
(Spanish, English and Asian) volunteers, as well as those experienced in
administering Hearing Exams and Cleanings.
More than
40,000 children have received medical screenings at this event. We expect over 2,000 kids to attend this
year, which means we will likely perform
800 exams in our area. Many of these
three to five year olds have never seen a physician and about 10% will need
follow-up care.
Please
donate a few hours of your time to this worthy cause. Not only will you make it possible for the
children to enter the Head Start program, you will allow them to get the
medical care they need. Your time can make a difference for these
preschoolers.
To
register:Non Physician FormPhysician FormVisit http://www.actkidshealthfair.org/ for more information! For questions, contact Lisa Silva
at 602-252-2015. Please register by August
14, 2009. Thank you for volunteering
your time and we look forward seeing you there! |
States eligible to receive $350 Million for H1N1, seasonal flu preparedness efforts
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One day after hosting a summit on the 2009 novel H1N1 flu with
representatives from state, tribal, territorial and local governments
from across the country, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today
announced the availability of $350 million in grants to help states and
territories prepare for the 2009 novel H1N1 flu virus and the fall flu
season. The grants were funded by the recent supplemental
appropriations bill that was passed by Congress and signed into law by
President Barack Obama on June 24, 2009. "With flu season around
the corner, we must remain vigilant and do all we can to prepare our
nation and protect public health," said Secretary Sebelius. "These
grants will give states valuable resources to step up their flu
preparedness efforts." A total of $260 million in Public Health
Emergency Response Grants and $90 million in Hospital Preparedness
grants will be distributed nationwide. Public Health Emergency
Response grants help state public health departments perform a variety
of functions, including preparing for potential vaccination campaigns,
implementing strategies to reduce people's exposure to the 2009 novel
H1N1 flu and improving influenza surveillance and investigations. Hospital
Preparedness grants enhance the ability of hospitals and health care
systems to prepare for and respond to public health emergencies. Local
outbreaks of the novel H1N1 virus have produced a surge of patients at
hospitals, and these grants will help ensure hospitals are ready for
future outbreaks that may impact their community. In addition to
the grants released today, the Obama Administration has taken a series
of steps to help prepare and protect the American people from the novel
H1N1 flu. In May of this year, HHS distributed 11 million treatment
courses of antivirals to states, territories and tribes to fight the
H1N1 influenza outbreak. Also in May, HHS invested more than $1
billion to produce bulk supplies of key vaccine ingredients as part of
the process to develop and test a potential H1N1 vaccine. The
Administration has upgraded and expanded www.flu.gov, which includes
guidance that community leaders and the American people need to prepare
for, prevent, and respond to the H1N1 flu virus. The Obama
Administration has also launched a new public service announcement
competition. Any American can record and submit his or her own public
service announcement regarding H1N1 flu preparedness by visiting
www.flu.gov. The entries will be judged by experts and the winner will
receive a $2,500 prize and the opportunity to have his or her
announcement aired on television across the country. A list of funding by state is included here: |
Obama nominates Regina Benjamin for Surgeon General
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President Barack Obama announced today that he would nominate Regina
Benjamin, MD, a family physician in the fishing village of Bayou La
Batre, Alabama, to be the next US surgeon general. The appointment
requires confirmation by the US Senate.
In one sense, the former community organizer in Chicago turned US
senator and then US president chose someone very much in his mold. Dr.
Benjamin's service in the poor Gulf Coast community of 2500 -
devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Georges in 1998 -
has been a springboard to medical leadership on a national scale. Dr.
Benjamin has served on the board of trustees of the American Medical
Association (AMA), for example. And she's the immediate past chair of
the Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States.
Appearing with President Obama when he announced the nomination, Dr.
Benjamin said she wanted to ensure "that no one - no one - falls
through the cracks as we improve our healthcare system." Fueling her
motivation, she explained, was the medical history of her own family.
"My father died with diabetes and hypertension," said Dr. Benjamin.
"My older brother, and only sibling, died at age 44 of HIV-related
illness. My mother died of lung cancer, because as a young girl, she
wanted to smoke just like her twin brother could. My Uncle Buddy, my
mother's twin, who's one of the few surviving black World War II
prisoners of war, is at home right now, on oxygen, struggling for each
breath because of the years of smoking." Read complete article... |
Part B drug proposal would curtail Medicare pay cuts after 2010
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The typically bleak outlook that marks the proposed
Medicare fee schedule for the upcoming year was significantly brighter
this time around for physicians looking for relief from impending pay
cuts.
In a major policy reversal from the previous administration, the
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has proposed removing
physician-administered drugs from the calculation of the Medicare
physician payment formula. Doctor pay is reduced across the board when
spending on all physician services -- a category that includes Part B
drugs -- exceeds annual targets. Removing the costs of the drugs would
lessen the extent to which spending would exceed targets and trigger
cuts.
The CMS proposal, announced July 1, would not reduce next year's
planned 21.5% across-the-board cut. But it would reduce the number of
years after 2010 that physicians face reductions under the payment
formula, and it also would decrease the size of the cuts that remain.
Over the next five years, projected doctor pay updates of between
-6.3% and -5.4% would be replaced with updates of between -3.1% and
1.4%, said Jonathan Blum, director of the CMS Center for Medicare
Management. This means Medicare would pay physicians $45.4 billion more
over those five years than it would if the physician-administered drugs
remained part of the pay formula.
More information
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Reminder program boosts mammography rates
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A multimodal reminder system can be both effectively implemented and
maintained in a large health system and increase mammography rates,
according to the results of a study reported online July 14 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
"We know mammograms are effective, but too many women put them off,
even when they have health insurance," lead author Adrianne C.
Feldstein, MD, from Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research in
Portland, Oregon, said in a news release. "This study is the first to
show that these reminder programs can be effective in such a large
group of women. If we could improve the country's mammography rate by
the same amount, we could detect as many as 25,000 additional cases of
breast cancer each year."
Using electronic medical record data, the investigators compared
compliance with mammography during a pre-reminder phase (2004), a
post-reminder implementation phase (2006), and a post-reminder
maintenance phase (January 1 - July 1, 2007). The study sample
consisted of 35,104 women aged 42 years or older who were 20 months
past their last mammogram (index date) and who were members of the
Kaiser Permanente Northwest health maintenance organization.
Read more...
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Serving medicine, serving the community
since
1892...
InforMed
Society is published by the Maricopa County
Medical Society.
Copyright
© 2009
Questions
or Comments, please email us at: InforMed@mcmsonline.com |
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