The 2014 Regular Session of the Colorado General Assembly concluded yesterday, May 7. Over the past 120 days, the Colorado Medical Society lobbied for or against more than 40 bills to ensure legislation benefits physicians professionally and helps improve the health and wellness of Colorado patients. The CMS Council on Legislation (COL), along with their policy and public affairs professionals, reviewed each bill to understand its intent, its possible outcomes and the political landscape to collectively determine how and at what level CMS should engage. Demonstrating that organized medicine in Colorado is not an oxymoron, CMS and state and component medical societies united on numerous bills to enhance impact and assure positive outcomes.

Below are a few of CMS' legislative victories during the 69th Colorado General Assembly. The Colorado Medical Society:

• Maintained Colorado's stable tort environment by thwarting all attempts to increase the value of a lawsuit
• Achieved a 2 percent across-the-board provider rate increase in Medicaid payment
• Passed a bipartisan bill that forms the Colorado Commission on Affordable Health Care to analyze health care costs in Colorado; one representative on the commission will be from CMS
• Stopped efforts by alternative health care providers, acupuncturists and naturopaths to expand their scope of practice and diminish requirements for registration
• Stopped a bill that would have criminalized a physician's failure to report his or her patients to the DMV for a broad list of medical conditions

Click here to read the full end-of-session report on CMS.org. And look for a full summary of the 2014 legislative session in the June/July 2014 issue of Colorado Medicine.

Make plans to join the Colorado Medical Society for the 2014 CMS Spring Conference, Friday, May 16 - Sunday, May 18, at the Sonnenalp Hotel in Vail. Click here to register online.

This year's conference, "Narrative as Persuasion: The Proven Effectiveness of Storytelling," invites top state and national experts to address critical issues facing medicine in Colorado. Participants will learn how to apply tangible storytelling skills from a professional communications consultant in order to more effectively express medicine's message on these and other issues. Plus, attendees will enjoy plenty of social time with colleagues and free time to enjoy Vail.

Reserve your hotel room under the CMS group rate of $155 per night for a junior suite. The deadline for this special rate is May 9, 2014. Reservations can be made by phone through the Sonnenalp reservations department at (800) 654-8312, or online at www.sonnenalp.com.

Click here to go to the spring conference page of CMS.org.

With the large number of Coloradans newly insured through the Affordable Care Act comes a risk for payment issues to physician practices due to the 90-day grace period. CMS Immediate Past President Jan Kief, MD, testified at a hearing of the Colorado Division of Insurance on Thursday, May 1, about a proposed state rule to clarify the 90-day grace period.

Per federal rule, patients who receive federal subsidies to purchase plans through the state health insurance exchange have a 90-day grace period for non-payment of premiums. During the first 30 days the health insurer must pay for claims as if the patient were eligible, but in the last 60 days they can suspend claims, potentially putting the physician on the hook for collecting from patients.

The ACA requires that the carrier notify the enrollee's physician and other health care providers when a patient enters into the second and third month of the grace period, but the notification requirement is vague and does not indicate when such notification must be made.

Click here to read the full story on Kief's testimony on clarifying the notification requirement in the last two months of the 90-day grace period. Click here to read her testimony.

The Commonwealth Fund recently released its 2014 Scorecard on State Health System Performance, which assesses states on 42 indicators of health care access, quality, costs, and outcomes over the 2007-2012 period. This period includes the Great Recession and precedes the major coverage expansions of the Affordable Care Act.

The authors found that changes in health system performance were mixed overall, with states making progress on some indicators while losing ground on others. In a few areas that were the focus of national and state attention -- childhood immunizations, hospital readmissions, safe prescribing, and cancer deaths -- there were widespread gains but more often than not, states exhibited little or no improvement.

Colorado received praise for being one of four states that achieved the greatest net improvement among indicators. Our state ranked in the top quartile overall -- improving from 15th on the 2009 scorecard to 12th on the 2014 scorecard -- and ranked in the top quartile in three individual measures: Prevention and treatment, avoidable hospital use and cost and healthy lives. Colorado ranked in the second quartile in equity and in the third quartile in access and affordability. Since 2009, the state has worsened in six performance indicators and improved in 16 indicators.

Click here to read the full article on CMS.org. Click here to access the full report on the Commonwealth Fund's website.

Take a moment to consider how you made the decision to become a physician. Did you want to help people? Was it because you enjoy working hard in a challenging career? Were you looking for a stable career with a good income? While some of these reasons may have factored into your choice, it turns out that your personal values are likely to have initiated your interest in a medical career. On a list of top 10 values, the majority of physicians ranked benevolence -- striving to provide quality care to those in need -- as the highest. Among physicians, power is ranked as the least important value.

Job satisfaction is impacted by your values as well. Physicians who ranked benevolence as an important value also report having a high level of satisfaction in their work, while those who identified power as important report being dissatisfied with the medical profession. There is an incentive to remaining true to your values. Those who work in careers that do not match their values are more susceptible to burnout.

Click here to read more about work and well-being in the latest physician wellness feature on CMS.org. We encourage you to comment on each installment of our series on physician wellness to shape a physician wellness toolkit in development by experts at the Behavioral Health and Wellness Program at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.