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AAOS Advocacy in Action
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Joined the Surgical Coalition in a meeting with the White House Office of Management and Budget to advocate for updating the evaluation and management codes within the global surgical packages. |
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Signed onto a letter led by the Friends of NQF requesting additional investments in support of critical healthcare quality improvement and measurement initiatives, specifically passage of the Promoting Health Care Quality Act of 2022 (H.R. 8201). |
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Urged leaders of the House and Senate to ensure that the final appropriations bill includes funding for the MISSION ZERO Program, which is designed to secure a national trauma system and sets the goal of achieving zero preventable deaths. |
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| Ask Congress to STOP Medicare Cuts to Physician Reimbursement |
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| Congress has the opportunity to prevent the 4.42% cut to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule that is set to take place on January 1, 2023. The bill under consideration, called the Support Medicare Providers Act of 2022 (H.R. 8800), currently has 60 cosponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives. It includes a ‘sense of Congress’ section encouraging action to ensure financial stability in the Medicare physician payment system, promote and reward value-based care, and advance health equity and reduce disparities.
Help encourage passage of the bill by quickly sending a pre-written letter to your representatives either requesting or thanking them for support. When congressional offices hear from orthopaedic surgeons, they listen! |
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| Protect patient access to specialty medicine. |
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Healthcare Policy News
CMS Extends Bundled Payment Model Through 2025
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is extending the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced (BPCI-A) alternative payment model through 2025 with certain changes and updates. Both convener and non-convener participants who were active during Model Year 6 (2023) will be eligible to continue, while new convener applicants must be Medicare-enrolled entities or Accountable Care Organizations and new non-convener applicants must be an acute care hospital or a physician group practice. Updates to the pricing methodology will include reducing the CMS discount for medical clinical episodes from 3% to 2%, and making major joint replacement of the upper extremity a multi-setting clinical episode category by including total shoulder arthroplasty procedures in the model. Additionally, the agency will hold model participants accountable for clinical episodes including a COVID-19 diagnosis beginning in Model Year 6. Read more… |
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State News
Pennsylvania Legislature Approves Historic Prior Authorization Reform Measure
On the final day of its two-year legislative session, the Pennsylvania General Assembly advanced a measure to the governor aimed at reforming insurer prior authorization and step therapy processes. Senate Bill 225 would streamline prior authorization burdens associated with commercial health insurance plans by standardizing approval timeframes. The bill’s key Senate author, state Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill, specifically thanked constituent, and BOC member, Suzette J. Song, MD, FAAOS, for bringing this issue to her attention. If signed into law, the bill will call for peer review by a physician from the same specialty when a payer questions the necessity of a given service and create an electronic prior authorization portal. The Pennsylvania Orthopaedic Society was a key leader in the broad and diverse coalition that worked to advance the bill in a nearly five-year effort bolstered by support from the AAOS State Health Policy Action Fund. Read more… |
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OrthoPAC Resources for Midterm Election
The midterm election is in less than two weeks, and the OrthoPAC is offering the below resources to show which physician candidates are running for office and how incumbents have supported musculoskeletal healthcare policy issues…
- Joint Policy Card – Use this resource to review which members of the 117th Congress support priority legislation affecting musculoskeletal care. You will also see that through the power of our Office of Government Relations and the OrthoPAC, we have strong champions on both sides of the aisle.
- Election Podcast Episode – This new episode of the AAOS Advocacy Podcast breaks down the physicians currently in Congress, those at risk for re-election and new candidates vying for office. It explains the importance of physician representation at the federal level for key decision-making as well as civic engagement for the future of the profession.
- OrthoPAC Transparency Hub – You can learn more about the Orthopaedic PAC’s criteria for giving and how funds are dispersed by visiting the transparency hub on aaos.org or by using the links below (AAOS member login required).
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| REACH OUT |
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| QUESTIONS
For questions or concerns on these or other advocacy issues, contact us at dc@aaos.org. |
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| JOIN THE PAC |
| Did you know? Supporting our Orthopaedic PAC by phone is easy: simply text AAOS to the number 41444. Learn more about OrthoPAC.
MAKE A DONATION
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