August 27, 2008
NMSA President’s Update
- Greetings NMSA,
I wanted to give everyone a quick update on just a few items that are in progress within the New Mexico Society of Anesthesiologists:
1. The NMSA annual meeting planning committee met at length Tuesday night, with very productive results, an exciting ‘Clinical Anesthesia: Best Practices 2009’ in progress. The date is April 18, 2009, so please set that weekend aside as you plan ahead. The location is, as in past years, the Albuquerque Grande Airport Hotel, formerly Airport Wyndham. This is the easiest and least expensive location (thus far) for the majority of speakers and Society members. We looked thoroughly into several other Albuquerque and Santa Fe sites, but this remains the best. The meeting committee is working hard to create the best meeting that will appeal to the most, including potentially ASA president-elect Roger Moore, MD to update the Society on ASA’s accomplishments and future directions.We are looking at other well known speakers to discuss cerebral oximetry, OR safety issues, drug eluting stents, on-pump vs. off-pump CABG’s, and potentially many other controversial topics. These should appeal to all of us, and should help us improve our clinical practice the following Monday. We look forward to seeing all of you there.
2. ASA President Jeffrey Apfelbaum, MD circulated a nice synopsis (July 28, 2008) of the ASA’s legislative victory with H.R. 6331, the POSITIVE Medicare payment update for 2008 and 2009, and FINALLY correction of the Medicare teaching payment penalty that has affected our residency programs since 1994. With this success, all within the ASA should be proud to belong! Dr. John Wills notified the planning committee of a potential ASA membership fee increase, even still, I feel this is money well spent, as the ASA battles for our benefit.
3. I’ve heard nothing further regarding the potential CMS gainsharing approach to maximizing efficiency and payment approaches in Acute Care Episodes (ACE). However, I’m certain this is progressing. Please contact me if you are participating; I’m interested in your thoughts. I suspect all MC providers will be gain-sharing soon!!
There are lots and lots of great thing in progress for the NMSA!!
As always, please feel free to contact me regarding any ideas and improvements that I can work on to make the NMSA better. That is my goal!! I appreciate every bit of your help!
Sincerely,
Phil Owen, MD
NMSA President
Greetings.
I want to introduce myself as I begin my presidency of the great New Mexico Society of Anesthesiologists. I’m Phil Owen, and I am honored to inherit the helm from Nivine Doran, after her two years of excellent leadership. It’s hard to appreciate what’s involved until you’ve experienced it, and a lot of time and effort are critical to a successful Society. My dad made a career of teaching his students how to master Speech and Communication, and communication is the area that I want to emphasize the most in my leadership of the NMSA. Those that I’ve interacted with over the last few years often say “what’s NMSA (and ASA for that matter) doing (done) for me? Why should I join them??”
I plan to maximize communication among the Society members over the
next two years, to make everyone aware of what the Society does, and
CAN do for its members, and why it’s beneficial to belong.
We may not all agree on the decisions/accomplishments of the Society, but the democratic process prevails in NMSA and ASA as well, and we need to hear from everyone. I want to be the sounding board of all of your thoughts and ideas, all the ways to improve the NMSA, to make it a valuable component in New Mexico’s medical and legislative environment.
I want to use our e-mail/standard mail lists to communicate frequently, and to do my best to keep everyone up-to-date on current legislative threats/actions. It’s not easy to keep current on what’s affecting us. I hope to help make this easier.
Some things on my mind right now:
1) 2009 NMSA meeting: You don’t realize how much effort and planning goes into successful annual meetings. The annual meeting committee, with the support of Sally Blackstad, the NMSA Specialty Society Coordinator, collectively combines contacts, good ideas, and lots of suggestions to mold our annual meetings. I feel quality meetings depend on comfortable locations, interesting contemporary product exhibits, and most importantly excellent speakers who present contemporary and pertinent clinical (usually) issues and ideas that we can utilize the following Monday. We usually title the meetings ‘Clinical Anesthesia: Best Practices 200_’.
I ask for your input as we plan for 2009. We need input on what would benefit you the most in terms of speaker ideas (coding, peds, bariatrics, etc.). We want to improve attendance each year, and I feel excellent speakers and topics are the best draw. My co-workers seem to flock to the Arizona Society meeting in February each year, mainly because of the golfing, but we need to build our meetings so that our appeal is maximized. Our meeting committee will be meeting early Fall, so please e-mail me with any thoughts/suggestions that you have. My email is
2) Upcoming CMS Project CMS has a new project using a gainsharing approach to increasing efficiency and minimizing costs in Medicare FFS patients with acute surgical problems, select orthopedic and cardiovascular acute inpatient procedures. CMS is appealing to a select group of facilities for an experimental Demonstration model to test this approach to cost containment. This experiment deals only with New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and Oklahoma. The eligible facilities should have a physician-hospital organization (PHO), which they define as an “affiliation of at least one hospital with at least one physician group…” Payments during this Acute Care Episode (ACE) Demonstration will be based on net savings for these select procedures, not to exceed 25% of the traditional amount paid by MC. This amount is returned to the hospital and the physician groups involved, as a reward for cutting costs.
I spoke with Chip Amoe, the Asst. Director of Federal Affairs of the ASA, in Wash.,DC. He sees this as a bundled payment approach to these MC surgical issues , with hospitals agreeing to participate in this experimental program, hopefully in consultation with the
Please feel free to contact me if there are any issues or concerns that you think NMSA should address or be aware of. Again, my goal is to maximize communication within the Society, please help to keep me informed. Thanks for your time.
