Contents tagged with health care reform

  • Work to support family medicine in new health care reform environment is just beginning

    Tags: news, texas family physician, perspective, health care reform, goertz

    Tuesday, April 19, 2011 11:15:00 AM
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    By Roland Goertz, M.D., M.B.A.
    AAFP President, 2010-2011

    Passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—commonly known as the Affordable Care Act, or simply PPACA—was an important step toward establishing primary care as the foundation of America’s health care system. The law will have a far-reaching impact on family medicine as the nation begins to rebalance our health care system with more appropriate emphasis on primary care. Once fully implemented, it will focus more on health care and place a greater emphasis on prevention, primary care, and improved health outcomes instead of a predominately sickness care model which has focused on paying for procedures and volume.

    The final vote and the signing of the PPACA was a first step. Now the task is implementation. And this is where the real work—and the real debate—begin Since its passage, the AAFP has focused on filling in the holes in the Affordable Care Act, preserving its primary care-friendly provisions, and ensuring support for primary care education that will help increase the number of future family physicians.

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  • Is it time to declare independence from the RUC?

    Tags: health care reform, medicare, ruc, payment

    Friday, January 28, 2011 10:00:00 AM
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    In a recent opinion column published in Kaiser Health news, two prominent voices in health care policy gave primary care physicians a piece of revolutionary advice: Quit the RUC.

    If you don’t know what the RUC is, you aren’t alone.

    RUC stands for the Relative Value Scale Update Committee, a group of 29 physicians from various medical specialties that meets three times a year to advise the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Medicare physician fee reimbursement and how certain procedures should be valued. Created by the American Medical Association in 1991, the committee has no official government standing, yet it yields great power.

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  • Blog rec: “Health Scare” online

    Tags: health care reform, family physician

    Tuesday, January 25, 2011 10:15:00 AM
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    Part of the mission of the TXFamilyDocs blog is to highlight the work of our members. I’d like to direct you to an insightful blog by TAFP member Richard Young, M.D., titled, “American Health Scare: How you are scared into buying health care you, your employer, and your country can’t afford.” On the blog and website, Young gives a family physician’s non-partisan perspective on the health care reform law and other big issues facing the specialty, challenging readers to consider the “appropriate role” of health care in our society and asserting that “the primary solution to expensive health care is that the relationship between doctors and patients must change.”

    Check it out at www.healthscareonline.com.

    – kalfano

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  • The rise of the ACO and lessons learned from the Medicare Physician Group Practice demonstration

    Tags: health care reform, new england journal of medicine, accountable care organization

    Thursday, January 13, 2011 10:00:00 AM
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    As envisioned in the health reform law, the latest evolution of health delivery system reform involves consolidating the fragmented system of health care providers into efficient groups that take responsibility for a population of patients. Called accountable care organizations, this model boils down to three concepts: providing coordinated care by using all members of the health care team, measuring performance against evidence-based benchmarks, and reforming a payment system that currently rewards quantity over quality and reactive medicine over preventive medicine. The hope is that coordination, performance measurement, and payment reform will allow physicians to improve the quality of care for patients and reduce the cost.

    Coordinating care to reduce cost isn’t a new concept. Some liken it to health maintenance organizations of the ’80s and ’90s, others to the patient-centered medical home. There is plenty of literature on both, and we won’t delve into them here.

    If you’re looking for guidance on ACOs, one of the most useful sources is the five-year CMS pilot project that began in April 2005 and concluded in March 2010. (When lawmakers were crafting the health reform law, they had access to years 1 and 2. Now we also have 3 and 4, and are waiting for 5.)

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  • Don’t let others define you

    Tags: texas family physician, perspective, health care reform

    Thursday, November 11, 2010 10:15:00 AM
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    By Guy L. Culpepper, M.D.

    During his recent NFL Hall of Fame induction speech, running back Emmitt Smith affirmed that refusing to let others define him was critical to his success. This simple, yet powerful advice has been a core value shared by champions throughout history. Success begins with a clear vision of one’s abilities and goals. Defining identity must not be swayed by the ever-present naysayers. This principle holds true across all spectrums of life; in faith, in business, and certainly in medicine.

    Nicholas Pisacano, M.D., the founding director of the American Board of Family Practice, faced a multitude of naysayers and roadblocks when he led the efforts to have family practice recognized as the 20th medical specialty in 1969. To achieve that recognition required meticulous documentation and high standards of definition as to the training and responsibilities of the family physician. In other words, family physicians defined themselves. And Dr. Pisacano understood the importance of defining ourselves.

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