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Posted on 12.07.09 by Executive Vice President Susan Hogeland, CAE 

The deadline for receipt of chapter delegation names to the 2010 CAFP Congress of Delegates as well as for resolutions is this Thursday, December 10.  Planning is well underway for the event which will take place in Sacramento March 6-8.  We've just been notified AAFP President Lori Heim will attend to speak to the Congress and induct our new officers.  Those interested in being delegates or alternates should contact their chapter presidents or district directors.  All members are invited to attend; all members may also participate in our legislative and media training sessions on Sunday afternoon, and the legislative visits on Monday morning, March 8.

The Academy is closely following action by the Food and Drug Administration calling for a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) for long-acting opioids.  Family physicians are major prescribers of long-acting opioids because they see so many patients with chronic pain.  CAFP is concerned that significant bureaucratic hassles could result in unwillingness to prescribe and, therefore, loss of access to care by patients with chronic pain.  I attended an FDA hearing in College Park, Maryland last Friday to monitor the situation.  The Industry Work Group presented its initial findings calling for more patient education about risks, proper storage and disposal, and risks of accidental exposure for those for whom the drugs are not prescribed; voluntary education for providers about proper patient selection and prescribing, a common medical guide, communications plan and training and/or certification.   By the end of the evaluation period for the REMS (seven years), however, the upshot could be an effort to tie DEA licensure to fulfillment of mandatory educational requirements.  CAFP has written the FDA to state our concerns and to indicate we plan a survey of our membership early in the year to determine what impact potential FDA steps could have on their practices.

CAFP leaders and staff will have the privilege of meeting with Paul Grundy, MD, IBM Global Director of Healthcare Transformation, the business guru of the patient centered medical home (PCMH) movement and tremendous advocate for primary care at CAFP headquarters on December 17.  Dr. Grundy contacted CAFP after reading of our strategic plan goal to become a center of excellence for PCMH education over the next three years.  Again, CAFP plans to survey its members to obtain baseline data on their state of readiness to consider adoption of PCMH features as a means of improving provider and patient satisfaction with care as well as the bottom line.

Last week, Director of Medical Policy Sandy Newman met with Assemblyman Jared Huffman, CMA,  representatives of Blue Shield of California, and the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH) to discuss release of data which CAFP and CMA believe to be flawed from the California Physician Performance  Initiative.  CAFP wrote to PBGH on November 4 to discuss in detail CAFP's concerns about the data's accuracy and to offer to work collaboratively to achieve a better outcome. 

In addition, we remain actively engaged in the Regional Extension Center (REC) issue; Ms. Newman will be attending another REC meeting next week.  On Wednesday of this week, she and I will be meeting with Dr. Betsy L. Thompson, Chief Medical Officer, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for Regional IX to discuss Medicare issues in particular.  On Friday of this week, CAFP will host a meeting of our Single Payer Task Force, which was set up by action of the Congress of Delegates to examine under what conditions, if any, CAFP would support single payer health care reform legislation.