Don't miss your chance to get the best price for the Keystone Resort, the host hotel of the 2016 CMS Annual Meeting, which will be held Sept. 16-18. A limited number of hotel rooms are available at the resort under the CMS group rate starting at $156/night, not including 12.02% tax. Monday, Aug. 15 is the deadline to guarantee the best rate. Reserve your room through the resort's online reservations webpage, by phone at 1-800-258-0437, or by fax by downloading the lodging form in Word or as a PDF. CMS's group code is CL2M16. Be sure to mention this code to receive the group rate.

Still need to register for the meeting? Go to CMS's online registration portal.

In case you missed it, on July 13, the Colorado Medical Society released two educational documents that analyze ColoradoCare/Amendment 69 and the current health care system. The amendment will be voted on by Coloradans in November and, if passed, will dramatically change health care financing and delivery in our state. At CMS, we want you to be as informed as possible about ColoradoCare and in the process help decide what position CMS takes on the amendment.

CMS encourages all members to review the pro/con analyses on ColoradoCare and the current multi-payer system that a special advisory committee of your peers created. You can find the analyses here or you can review them in the July/August issue of Colorado Medicine.

Your timely review is important because CMS will conduct a statewide membership survey beginning the second week of August to get your views on ColoradoCare and the current multi-payer system. Your perspectives, along with those of physicians across the state, will be the major determining factor on the public position CMS takes on the amendment. The CMS Board of Directors will make this decision at their September meeting during the annual meeting. The survey data will be released on Friday night during the annual meeting during the ColoradoCare debate.

Thank you for making time to review these analyses and for sharing your opinions on the membership poll in a week. Your opinions matter to us.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued lawsuits on Thursday, July 21 in an effort to block the proposed mega-mergers between Anthem and Cigna and Aetna and Humana. The Colorado Medical Society took an aggressive stand since they were announced last summer, first by urging state and federal investigators to carefully scrutinize the mergers and then in March of this year announcing opposition, along with the American Medical Association and 16 additional state medical associations. CMS fully cooperated with the DOJ, and the state's Division of Insurance and attorney general. Aetna and Anthem have publicly stated that they intend to fight the DOJ lawsuit in efforts to push their mergers through.

A CMS/AMA analysis showed that the mergers would adversely affect care quality, patient access and insurance premiums given the mergers' anti-competitive nature. The DOJ issued a stinging rebuttal to health plan claims that the mergers would be good for the market and for patients. The DOJ action represents an important step and CMS will continue our vigorous advocacy on your behalf to ensure that your patients can get the care they need and that your practice can remain viable in a competitive marketplace. CMS thanks the DOJ and state Attorney General Cynthia Coffman (Colorado is a co-plaintiff in the suit against Anthem-CIGNA), our members and the many others who thoughtfully and consistently stood up for patients in efforts to block these mergers.

Read a statement from CMS President Mike Volz, MD.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Medical Association (AMA) invite you to join a webinar focused on Zika virus. The webinar will be held Wednesday, Aug. 10, at 5 p.m. MDT.

CDC Medical Epidemiologist Susan Hills, MBBS, MTH, will present an update on the epidemiological and clinical aspects of the current outbreak. CDC Medical Officer Kiran Perkins, MD, MPH, will present on the implications for pregnant women, including the CDC's updated interim clinical guidance. Following the presentations, the speakers will take questions from webinar participants. For more information on Zika, visit www.cdc.gov/Zika. To register for the webinar, click here.

A lot is happening in the world of payment reform. If you work in health care, your inbox is inevitably filled with tweets, newsletters and "Breaking News!" about VBPs, MIPS, MACRA, CJR, BCPI and a whole alphabet soup of others.

To address the onslaught of information and to really bring into focus what is happening right here in Colorado, Healthy Transitions Colorado is dedicating its August Symposium to payment reform.

Registration is now open. Click here to view the draft agenda.

Community Partners receive discounted registration fees! Your organization can sign up to be a community partner today.

For questions, please contact Miranda Meadow at [email protected].