Contents tagged with ragle
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Family medicine thrives in The Woodlands
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Family medicine thrives in The Woodlands
Report from TAFP’s 2015 Annual Session and Primary Care Summit
Family physicians and other health professionals from around the state … more
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Time to step up to the plate
By Dale Ragle, MD
TAFP President, 2014-2015This will be my final letter to you as TAFP president. It has been an honor and privilege to serve you and our outstanding organization.
This is an exciting and challenging time for family medicine. Health care reform and the sustainable growth rate repeal are expanding the rolls of the insured and will transition us from a volume-based payment system to a quality-based system over the next several years. Some analysts are concerned that increasing the number of insured may strain our health care system in the absence of increasing the physician workforce. While increasing the insurance rolls will generally increase access to care in the younger population, the resultant strain on our health care system could make it more difficult for certain vulnerable populations, such as elderly patients already on Medicare, to access the health system. This effect could be magnified in our state, which has about a 20 percent uninsured rate, unfortunately the highest in the nation.
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The brave new world of the SGR repeal
By Dale Ragle, MD
TAFP President, 2014-2015On April 16, 2015, President Obama signed the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, which phases out Medicare’s flawed sustainable growth rate payment formula over the next 10 years. The so-called “doc fix” enjoyed bipartisan and bicameral support in Congress, a rare phenomenon these days, as well as support from most major medical organizations, including AAFP and the American Medical Association. In spite of broad support, the bill took more than a year of tweaking and survived innumerable negotiations between both political parties and the White House, a testament to the adage that “the devil is in the details.”
The SGR formula tied Medicare expenditures to the gross domestic product. Since demand and utilization of health care services do not rise and fall directly with the ebbs and flows of the general economy, the SGR often threatened to cut physician fees year after year. Perennially, Congress passed special legislation to delay the fee cuts, often only finding they have to repeat the action in the following year.
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Cutting out the middle man
By Dale Ragle, MD
TAFP President, 2014-2015Greetings colleagues. Do you remember a time when you could take care of your patients without any of the hassle and expense associated with billing insurance companies? When you could spend as much time with your patient as needed? When you simply received payment from your patients instead of some third-party payer?
Many physicians practicing today have only heard stories of those days, but a growing number are rediscovering them by stepping off the insurance treadmill and contracting directly with their patients. Direct primary care is an innovative model for delivering and purchasing health care services that gives physicians and their patients an alternative to the third party, fee-for-service system. For a flat monthly fee, patients have unlimited access to their doctor—in person and by phone or e-mail—for a full range of comprehensive primary care services including acute and urgent care, regular checkups, preventive care, chronic disease management, and care coordination.
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All hands on deck
By Dale Ragle, MD
TAFP President, 2014-2015Welcome colleagues to a new year, a new Congress, and a new Texas Legislature. On all fronts, health care is evolving. These changes present family physicians tremendous opportunities to shape our future health care system. It’s up to all of us as family physicians to advocate for our specialty in the halls where decisions are made that affect our patients and our practices.
In Washington, D.C., the 114th Congress is well under way and is busy on a number of health care issues. AAFP’s advocacy work is focused on fixing Medicare’s broken payment model, changing Meaningful Use requirements, delaying ICD-10, and reforming graduate medical education funding. Another area in which AAFP is concentrating efforts is in making payment for direct primary care services a qualified health benefit under IRS rules. This would enable patients to pay for direct primary care with pre-tax HSA and FLEX account dollars, a move that would aid the expansion of this emerging and promising model of practice.
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Keep doing what you do best; change what needs to be changed
An adaptation of the 2014-2015 incoming president’s address
By Dale Ragle, MD
TAFP President, 2014-2015It is an honor and a privilege to serve my fellow family docs as TAFP President. There is no other group of people that I would rather serve and give my time to than you. I represent all of you, whether you are a solo, rural doc in west Texas where you may be the only doctor within 70 miles, a doctor in a big multi-specialty group, a resident in training, or a medical student aspiring for a career in family medicine. You all deserve my service and attention and you all shall get it.
The last three members to serve as president of our organization have initiated their terms with inaugural speeches about change and reform of our health care system. I too will tell you that our health care system is indeed changing and we are going to have to adapt in some way. The forces driving this change are bigger than TAFP, they are bigger than AAFP, and they are bigger than the AMA.
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Family physicians gather in Fort Worth
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Family physicians gather in Fort Worth
Report from TAFP’s 64th Annual Session & Scientific Assembly
posted 08.15.13
More than 400 family physicians and other health professionals … more
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Highlights from TAFP’s Interim Session, March 1-2, 2013
Highlights from TAFP’s Interim Session
The committees, commissions, and sections of the Texas Academy of Family Physicians met in Austin on March 1-2, 2013. The Board of Directors met on Saturday, … more