FP Report -- 1999 Post-Assembly Edition
Congress calls for FP-friendly productivity guidelines
The Congress of Delegates voted Sept. 15 to have the AAFP create productivity guidelines friendly to family physicians. The Congress also tackled other health care services issues at its meeting in Orlando, Fla.
Productivity. "We need a better way of measuring what we do than counting the number of people who come through our door," delegate Thomas Norris, M.D., of Seattle told the Congress.
Delegates agreed. They adopted a Washington AFP resolution revised by Norris, as follows: The Academy should recommend physician productivity guidelines that take into account complexity of patient management and practice mix and assure that quality of care can be maintained.
"The Academy needs to develop these guidelines over the next year or so," Norris said after the Congress approved his revision. "What we measure determines what we get paid for."
Drug costs. In an era in which HMO drug expenses approximate HMO costs for primary care services, the AAFP Congress suggested steps to curb spending on pharmaceuticals. Delegates asked the AAFP to:
- help establish a national forum to find solutions to the rising costs of medicines,
- develop information and other means to help physicians control drug costs, and
- encourage primary care research to promote cost-effective drug prescribing.
Drugs for indigent patients. Drug companies have programs to provide medicines to the indigent, but each company has a different application process, and the time lag between a request and the patient's receipt of the medicine may be as much as six weeks, said delegates.
They voted for the Academy to work with the pharmaceutical industry to develop an easily available application process (online or otherwise) for the drugs.
E/M guidelines. Delegates urged the Academy to work to ensure that evaluation and management documentation guidelines will be used as an educational tool, not a punitive instrument, and that fraud and abuse charges will be imposed on physicians only in cases in which the intent to defraud is clear.
Reimbursement for treating tobacco use, obesity. The Academy should actively support reimbursement for treatment of tobacco use and obesity, including pharmaceutical and behavioral modification treatments, said the delegates.
Hospitalist issues. The delegates supported patients' freedom to choose their family physician to provide inpatient care. Delegates also said FPs should be reimbursed for care of their own hospitalized patients.
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department. Copyright © 1999 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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