Let Your Voices Be Heard

Carter L. Alleman, J.D.

I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to come advocate, share your stories and experiences with your members of Congress. D.O. Day on Capitol Hill will provide you with the best opportunity to share with Congress you story. The ACOS and American Osteopathic Academy of Orthopedics (AOAO) are sponsoring a surgeons breakfast the morning of D.O. Day on Capitol Hill for all members who are attending.

I spent the last couple of weeks sitting in meetings and conferences on health care policy development and implementation. While policy experts discuss how healthcare should work, when Congress is included in these conversation, nothing works quite right. Congress does not know what it is to be a doctor, whether training or day to day work. It does not know the best ways to treat patients, nor does it know the best way to practice medicine yet Congress will still enact legislation without much input from the medical community because it believes it wants to help.

D.O. Day on Capitol Hill is April 13, 2016. Registration is available here. Registration closes March 11, 2016. Sign up today!

The opioid epidemic is the largest issue in health care right now before Congress. The main draft legislation that is being reviewed will have doctors running prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) reports for each Schedule 2, 3, 4, 5 medication every time it is prescribed before a patient can take it, without any exceptions or exclusions. There is not a single state law that is this strict. Also, Missouri does not operate a PDMP. I know what you are saying, “but Carter shouldn’t the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) and the American Medical Association (AMA) step in and tell Congress this is bad legislation and offer alternatives?” Unfortunately, this epidemic reaches so deep into the nation, any sort of slowing any legislation on opioids will be viewed as being against any solution. However, if doctors went and spoke with their members of Congress and explained what this legislation would do in their practices, changes could be made and produce legislation that will be effective and help end the epidemic.

D.O. Day on Capitol Hill is April 13, 2016. Registration is available here. Registration closes March 11, 2016. Sign up today!

The ACOS held a joint webinar with the AOA on the implementation of Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) on February 18, 2016. The webinar discussed the two new payment models, Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and alternative payment models (APMs). APMs were created as a way to fix the specialty medicines need to have a payment model which reflects the uniqueness of specialty medicine from primary care. A main component to making MACRA work is that Congress needs to provide oversight to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and make sure that CMS is enacting the legislation as congress intended. Case in point, currently CMS is not working with doctors to develop physician focused APMs, but are relying on their own payer modeled APMs. Within MACRA, Congress tasked CMS to review and model physician focused APMs and even gave them a mechanism to do this through the Physician Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee (PTAC). However, CMS is saying that PTAC only advises it and CMS will look at other models once it completes the regulations which will be final sometime in Fall 2016. The entire program is suppose to begin in 2019. Congress needs to hear from doctors about their fears if the programs are not completed in time and how these changes need to be made so that physicians and not payers are in charge of a patients care. It took over 16 years to get sustainable growth rate (SGR) reform, the new programs cannot start off on the wrong foot.

D.O. Day on Capitol Hill is April 13, 2016. Registration is available here. Registration closes March 11, 2016. Sign up today!

I heard at different meetings and conferences from CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt, Representative Pat Tiberi (R-OH), Senator Brian Schatz (D- HI) that they all want to hear from you. They want to hear your stories and concerns because they want to make healthcare in the United States the best it can be. Healthcare is a top issue issue today, it may even be the top issue today and we have the ability to make a positive impact and chart a new course for the delivery of care. I hope to see you all at D.O. Day on Capitol Hill.