Posted on 06.28.10 by Susan Hogeland, CAE

Another Medicare Reprieve
As I hope you've seen on the flash update on our website, Congress finally got its act together long enough to retroactively repeal the 21 percent Medicare physician pay cut and retroactively provide a 2.2 percent increase through November 30 - not a perfect solution, but temporary relief from what could have been a financial disaster for family physicians trying to care for their Medicare patients.  AAFP tells us they will be developing the following:

1) Legal advice to members who may decide no longer to see their current Medicare patients about how to avoid any issues of patient abandonment;

2) Continued availability and updates of a handout for members to give to patients asking them to go to Speak Out and write letters to Congress about this mess;  

3) Information for members about their status with Medicare as "participating" or "non-participating" providers, and how they might consider totally opting out of Medicare; and

4) A draft letter for members to use if they wish no longer to accept new Medicare patients.

In the interest of patient care, CAFP is hopeful that few if any family physicians will choose to opt out of Medicare and, with more hard work between now and November 30, a permanent fix to the Sustained Growth Rate problem will be found.

CAFP Gets Great Press for Immunization Bill, AB 2093
Staff and media consultant Catherine Direen pulled the CAFP equivalent of a college "all nighter" last week to secure some great press for the bill CAFP is co-sponsoring with others, AB 2093 (M. Perez) to ensure physicians are paid fairly for providing vaccinations to their patients.  You can take a look at a couple of articles here:  http://news.google.com/news/search?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=shaya+mohajer; "CA doctors hit cost of whooping cough vaccine:" http://www.cnbc.com/id/37930431; and California Health Line:  http://www.californiahealthline.org/articles/2010/6/28/vaccines-for-whooping-cough-too-costly-to-provide-physicians-say.aspx

AB2093 and CAFP's legislation to define the patient centered medical home, AB1542 (D. Jones) will be heard on June 30 in the Senate Health Committee.  CAFP has asked all Academy members to contact members of the Senate Health Committee and encourage their "yes" votes for both bills.

CAFP Leads Charge to Get the State of California to Apply for Medicare Advanced Primary Care Practice Demonstration (MAPCP) Project
CAFP spearheaded an effort last week that resulted in 18 organizations or individuals signing onto a letter to Medi-Cal's Toby Douglas asking the State of California to submit a Letter of Intent for the newly-announced Medicare Multi-Payer Advanced Primary Care Practice Demonstration Project.  CAFP and the other signers offered assistance to the state in pulling together an application due August 17, saying the demonstration project was too important to let the opportunity pass.  CAFP is hopeful Fresno County might ripe for a patient centered medical home demonstration project and has been working with representatives of the Fresno Unified School District health plan toward that end.    

CAFP's 2009 Audit Gets Good Results
I'm always happy to tell you that your Academy passed its audit in good shape - the Board will consider recommendations by the Audit Committee to approve the 2009 Financial Statement and management letters.  CAFP is fiscally sound, but we're always trying to improve our processes.