CEO Miriam Schwarz, President Bob Henderson, MD and Diane Hankes, MD (AllCare) are in Raleigh today meeting with many of our WNC legislators (we have appointments with Van Duyn, McGrady, Dobson, Turner, Ager, Fisher) to stop the recoupment of 3% of Medicaid funds that have already been disbursed to doctors over the past 14 months. (See article below under State news and help us by voicing your concern!) We will be pushing for physician-led ACO's as the solution to Medicaid reform and NOT MCO's. Finally, we will be advocating for the legislature to address the insurance gap in caused by lack of Medicaid expansion. 

In 2013, the NC General Assembly included a 3% "withhold" for all Medicaid services with the intention of using that money as the foundation of a shared-savings program with providers. After difficulty developing the program, the withhold was re-drafted as a cut with an effective date of January 1, 2014.

Doctors treating Medicaid patients now face a mandate to PAY BACK 3% of everything they have been paid by Medicaid for the last 14 months. Call or email your representative/senator and tell them how much you will have to send back to Medicaid, what it will mean to you and your practice, and that you cannot afford a massive recoupment at the same time you are being asked to transform the entire way we dieliver health care to the Medicaid population. 

Read more about the impact and take action here. 

Bipartisan Measure Touted as Benefit to Taxpayers and Health-care Consumers

The legislation would exempt diagnostic centers, ambulatory surgical facilities, gastrointestinal endoscopy rooms, and psychiatric hospitals from certificate-of-need review. A CON is basically a permission slip a provider must receive from the state in a regulatory approval process that is dominated by hospitals that currently provide the services.

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RALEIGH - State Rep. Donny Lambeth, a Winston-Salem Republican who is a former health-care industry executive, asked members of the House Health Committee on Wednesday to support a bill that would ban the use of tanning beds by minors under 18 to reduce the risk of cancer. The bill won the committee's approval in a matter of minutes.

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Since December 2014, Communicable Disease Branch surveillance data has identified six ocular syphilis cases in North Carolina. Five of the six cases were male, all presented with visual changes and had a rapid plasma reagin (RPR) titer ≥ 1:64. Due to concern for an uptick in ocular syphilis cases, the North Carolina Division of Public Health is asking medical providers to be proactive in ordering syphilis serologies in all patients who present with visual complaints and risk factors for syphilis infection. 

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