Dear NVOS Members,
The articles contained in this e-newsletter are excerpted from AAOS newsletters and other media sources to help our members stay current on national issues.
The NVOS Staff |
Simpson, Bowles Release New Plan To Control Spending
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 The Hill reports that Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles-the co-chairs of President Obama's deficit-reduction commission-have unveiled a new framework to cut deficits by $2.4 trillion over the next decade. Under the plan, about $600 billion in savings would come from healthcare savings, in part by reducing provider payments and increasing premiums for higher earners. "Our nation must seek to control its rapidly-growing healthcare spending while enhancing quality and value," they write. "Policymakers should reform federal health spending and tax preferences in order to reduce waste, improve incentives, and deliver care more effectively and efficiently to achieve significant savings in the near-term and control the growth of spending over the long-term. In the long-term, these reforms should be backed up by a cap on the budgetary commitment to health care, limiting per capita growth close to the growth of the economy."
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Read the plan...
The bipartisan duo will address the AAOS Annual Meeting on March 21.
Read more...
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Legislation Introduced To Revoke Insurers' Antitrust Exemption
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The Hill reports that a bill has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that, if enacted, would revoke the health insurance industry's exemption from antitrust laws. The bill's sponsors note that a similar bill passed with a bipartisan majority during the healthcare debate in 2010. Supporters of the legislation argue that it is currently legal for insurance companies to collude to drive up prices, limit competition, and conspire to underpay healthcare providers. A spokesperson for the insurance industry states that the federal law that granted insurers a partial exemption from antitrust laws does not limit competition within the insurance industry.
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Article Profiles Difficulties In Fixing SGR
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An article in Kaiser Health News offers some background on the  Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula and why it has proven so difficult to repeal. The author explains the origin of the 1997 law, which has required increasing reimbursement cuts for physicians every year since 2002. The so-called "fiscal cliff" agreement reached by the U.S. Congress on January 1 averted a 26.5 percent pay cut, but physicians face a potentially greater reduction when the agreement expires on Dec. 31, 2013. |
Medical School Graduates Face Widening Gap In Available Residency Slots
| Information released by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) finds a widening gap between the number of medical school graduates and the number of residency slots available. A spokesperson for AAMC states that medical schools have responded to projected physician shortages by increasing admissions, but residency programs have been slow to follow suit. In addition, if the automatic budget cuts (sequestration) are allowed to go into effect on March 1, the gap could be even wider. Graduate medical education is partially subsidized by the government through Medicare, making it vulnerable to cuts to the federal program. The information is reported in Kaiser Health News.
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Data Suggests Administrative Readmission Rates May Be Inflated
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 A study published in the February issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine suggests potential pitfalls in the calculation of readmission rates from administrative data sets. The authors examined data from 5,780 consecutive patient encounters managed by 10 spine surgeons at a single center between October 2007 and June 2011. They found that 281 patients (4.9 percent) were readmitted within 30 days of discharge. However, based on the authors' manual chart review, 69 cases (25 percent of the 281 total readmissions) should have been excluded because 39 cases (13.9 percent) were planned staged procedures; 16 cases (5.7 percent) were unrelated to spine surgery; and 14 surgical cases (5.0 percent) were cancelled or rescheduled at index admission due to unpredictable reasons. When those 69 cases were excluded, the direct cost of readmission was reduced by 29 percent, for a cost variance in excess of $3 million.
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Read the abstract...
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Report Finds Little Progress In Reducing Overall Readmission Rates
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A report released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation finds that hospitals and their community allies made little progress in reducing hospital readmissions for elderly patients from 2008 to 2010, with 1 in 8 Medicare patients readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of being released after surgery in 2010, and 1 in 6 returned to the hospital within a month of leaving the hospital after receiving medical care. The findings are based on data from more than 3,000 hospitals participating in the Dartmouth Atlas Project. The authors note that the data show that the chances of readmission after patients leave the hospital varies markedly across regions and hospitals, but overall readmission rates did not decline meaningfully for any of five patient populations (those discharged for medical conditions, for surgical conditions, and for common causes of medical hospitalization: congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarctions, and pneumonia) during the course of the study period.
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The NVOS Website Format Has Been Updated!
NVOS Website |
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Save the Date
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2013 NVOS Annual Meeting
April 26-27, 2013
Tropicana
Las Vegas, NV
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Register now for 2013 AAOS Annual Meeting!
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2013 AAOS Annual Meeting, March 19-23, 2013, in Chicago.
Events and features of the Annual Meeting include:
-28 symposia on exciting and timely topics
-825 paper presentations and 580 posters on the latest scientific and clinical studies
-217 instructional courses presented by world-renowned faculty
-More than 85 scientific exhibits on extended studies or complex procedures
-More than 550 technical exhibits
-Specialty Day programs offered by 14 specialty societies
-The opportunity to earn up to 38.5 continuing medical education credits
Learn more and register...(member login required)
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2012-2013 Board of Directors
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President
Eric Boyden, MD
Immediate Past President
Hugh Bassewitz, MD
Vice-President
Abdi Raissi, MD
Secretary
Colby Young, MD
Treasurer
Gregg Lundeen, MD
Members At Large
Chad Hanson, MD
Ronald Hillock, MD
Jedediah Jones, MD
Dan Lee, MD
Terrence Orr, MD
James Rappaport, MD
AAOS Board of Councilors
Hugh Bassewitz, MD,
Nevada Representative
Fred Redfern, MD,
Chair
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