April 2008

(04/29/2008)  --  An impasse between the governor of Pennsylvania and that state's legislature has temporarily derailed a medical liability abatement program, thus forcing many Pennsylvania physicians to pay a higher rate for medical liability insurance. "Family physicians are now required to pay anywhere from $1,500 to $2,500 in additional liability costs that would have been abated had the program been reauthorized by the state legislature," said Andrew Sandusky, vice president of governmental affairs at the Pennsylvania AFP. More

(04/25/2008)  --  The Senate Finance Committee is considering legislation that could serve as the basis for major health care reform efforts during the next presidential administration, according to analysts interviewed by AAFP News Now. In January 2007, Ron Wyden, D-Ore., introduced the Healthy Americans Act, S. 334, a bipartisan bill that reflects the values of both the Democratic and Republican parties, making it a viable vehicle for health care reform. More

(04/25/2008)  --  CMS recently announced tweaks to its 2008 Physician Quality Reporting Initiative, or PQRI, that should make it easier for family physicians and other eligible health care professionals to participate in -- and benefit from -- the program this year. More

(04/23/2008)  --  Two members of the Senate Finance Committee have announced that they are working on legislation to address payment issues for primary care physicians. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chair of the Senate Finance Committee, is expected to introduce legislation in the next several weeks that will increase Medicare payments for primary care physicians, and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has introduced legislation to resolve inequities in physician funding formulas that penalize physicians practicing in rural areas. More

(04/23/2008)  --  "Imagine reducing the volume of paper and mail in your office, while improving patient safety and reducing your professional liability. All at no cost to you." That's the opening of a short video posted earlier this spring on the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube. The video describes the Health Care Notification Network, or HCNN, a free new service that soon will begin delivering FDA-mandated patient safety notices -- those "Dear Doctor" letters FPs now receive via snail mail -- to physicians and other health care professionals electronically. More

(04/22/2008)  --  The AAFP National Research Network, or NRN, is renewing its call for participants for its Patient Sleep Problems and Alcohol Consumption Study. To date, the study has enrolled more than 70 clinicians and 1,200 patients. Researchers on the project are hoping to enroll a total of 100 clinicians by May 2008. More

(04/18/2008)  --  More than 70 family physicians and other health care professionals representing 30 family medicine practices from across the country met April 11-13 in Kansas City, Mo., to mark the end of a national demonstration project launched nearly two years ago by TransforMED, a not-for-profit redesign initiative affiliated with the AAFP. More

(04/18/2008)  --  According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ, one in four Americans does not take prescription medications as prescribed. Often, it's because they don't understand how to take their medications or because they simply lose track of what they're supposed to take each day. To address this problem, AHRQ has developed free, online, step-by-step instructions patients can use to create a "pill card" at home. More

(04/17/2008)  --  The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, or MedPAC, has endorsed two key recommendations that, if approved by Congress, would shift the focus of the Medicare program toward a more primary care-based system. During an April 9 meeting in Washington, MedPAC voted to recommend to Congress two separate but interrelated proposals that would alter Medicare's payment and delivery systems to promote the use of primary care services. More

(04/16/2008)  --  Colorado physicians have been engaged in an ongoing battle with that state's trial lawyers regarding a bill that would dramatically increase the amount of money patients and their trial attorneys can collect in malpractice awards. In March, the Colorado Senate narrowly passed S.B. 164, a bill supported by the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association that would raise the cap on noneconomic damages in civil suits by 50 percent to more than $450,000. More

(04/16/2008)  --  The patient-centered medical home should purposefully include mental health and substance abuse services to improve patient care and reduce costs, said the director of the AAFP's Robert Graham Center during a primary care forum in Washington on March 29. More

(04/16/2008)  --  FDA officials recently gave the nod to a second live, oral vaccine designed to protect infants and young children from rotavirus gastroenteritis caused by the G1, G3, G4 and G9 viral strains. Rotarix, which is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, is a liquid that is given as a two-dose series to infants between ages 6 and 24 weeks. More

(04/16/2008)  --  When it comes to boosting performance in an area of your practice, don't undertake just one activity, such as a CME course, and expect a measurably meaningful, sustainable improvement. Instead, combine several activities for a prolonged period to bring about the change you want. So says the study "Impact of Educational Interventions on Physician Performance and Patient Outcomes," which was published recently in CE Measure, the journal of outcomes measurement in continuing health care education. More

(04/10/2008)  --  CMS recently released a final rule that sets uniform standards for electronic prescribing, or e-prescribing, under the Medicare Part D prescription drug program. The rule does not require physicians, pharmacies and other providers to adopt e-prescribing as a condition of their participation in Medicare. Late last year, Academy EVP Douglas Henley, M.D., spoke out against mandatory e-prescribing, saying that calls for such action were preliminary. More

(04/10/2008)  --  Family physicians and America's seniors stand to benefit from a $2.9 million grant recently awarded by The Atlantic Philanthropies to the AAFP Foundation. The three-year grant is to help the Academy develop and implement educational programs for FPs, with the ultimate goal of improving health outcomes for America's seniors. More

(04/09/2008)  --  The AAFP is again supporting Cover the Uninsured Week, April 27-May 3, to help highlight the need to provide solutions to problems faced by the millions of Americans living without health insurance. About 47 million Americans, including 9 million children, lack health insurance, according to Cover the Uninsured, a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. More

(04/09/2008)  --  Physicians' collective blood pressure may have spiked after the Wall Street Journal published the article "Making Room for 'Dr. Nurse'" on April 2. "As the shortage of primary care physicians mounts, the nursing profession is offering a possible solution: the 'doctor nurse,'" the article begins, highlighting the growing number of doctor of nursing practice, or DNP, programs in U.S. nursing schools. More (Members Only)

(04/09/2008)  --  The growing call among health care professionals, legislators, health policy-makers, consumer advocates, and the public to boost the overall quality of health care provided in the United States has led to advances in quality. However, according to findings from two new annual reports published by the Agency on Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ, the overall rate of improvement is slowing. Similarly, although progress has been made in addressing some health care disparities among various racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups, overall inequalities in health care among different patient populations have not improved. More

(04/09/2008)  --  The AAFP has voiced objections to a new medication management standard for hospital emergency departments proposed by The Joint Commission, the accrediting organization for more than 15,000 health care organizations and programs throughout the nation. More

(04/09/2008)  --  Small businesses -- those with 100 or fewer employees -- would have the option of joining national or statewide insurance pools to obtain lower insurance premiums under a bill recently introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. The Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) Act addresses one of the most pressing problems faced by small business owners and the self-employed -- the high cost of providing health care for themselves and their employees. More

(04/09/2008)  --  The AMA made a congressional "house call" on April 2, staging an outdoor rally on Capitol Hill at which more than 250 physicians gathered to demand Medicare payment reform. "We know the current Medicare system is unfair," said FP Gerald Harmon, M.D., of Georgetown, S.C., one of two family physicians to address the rally. "It is a storm, a disaster waiting to happen -- a disaster that is going to affect millions of our elderly. It is going to break the hearts of dedicated physicians around the country." More

(04/08/2008)  --  When Kerry Weems was appointed acting administrator of CMS last September, the emphasis was on his financial and management background. Speculation was that Weems' appointment was a response to the financial budget crunch facing the Medicare and Medicaid programs -- a crunch that has the potential to hit family physicians hard if the 10.6 percent reduction in Medicare payments called for by the sustainable growth rate, or SGR, formula goes into effect on July 1 as scheduled. More

(04/04/2008)  --  The California AFP is partnering with eight other organizations in a multi-year CME initiative designed to significantly reduce the number of Americans who smoke. The initiative's primary goal is to educate at least 46,000 physicians and other health care professionals about effective ways to help patients quit. Hand-in-hand with that goal will be providing useful tools to help clinicians implement what they've learned. More

(04/02/2008)  --  Some of the largest health insurance plans in the United States have agreed to adhere to a national set of principles for collecting and reporting physician performance measurements to consumers. More

(04/02/2008)  --  It's a familiar scenario to most family physicians: A patient presents with symptoms of rhinosinusitis, but there is no way to know from that presentation whether the infection is viral or bacterial. Recently published guidelines on prescribing antibiotics for this condition are more stringent than those presented in the past, but many physicians continue to prescribe these antimicrobials in the absence of definitive evidence of the infection's etiology. More

(04/02/2008)  --  The AAFP, together with the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, or AAP, recently moved one step closer to realizing a joint goal of universal immunization against seasonal influenza. On March 13, AAFP Board Chair Rick Kellerman, M.D., of Wichita, Kan., gave an official thumbs-up to a recommendation from the three groups that calls for expanding annual influenza immunizations to include all children ages 6 months to 18 years beginning no later than the 2009-2010 influenza season. More

(04/02/2008)  --  Consumers are being warned not to purchase or use "Blue Steel" and "Hero," distributed by Active Nutraceuticals or the Marion Group in Carrollton, Ga., according to a March 25 FDA news release. The products are considered illegal drugs because they have not been proven safe or effective and because they contain undeclared ingredients, including substances similar in chemical structure to sildenafil, the FDA found. More

(04/02/2008)  --  Primary care physicians, like all health care professionals, are encouraged to deliver patient-centered services that respond to what patients want and need. But what attributes do patients value most in primary care consultations? Researchers in the United Kingdom's National Primary Care Research and Development Centre at the University of Manchester and University of York explored that question in a study reported on in the March/April Annals of Family Medicine. More

(04/02/2008)  --  Ohio recently became the latest state to enact legislation requiring insurance companies to spell out the exact terms and conditions of their contracts with physicians. Ohio's Healthcare Simplification Act attempts to level the playing field between insurance companies and physicians by providing transparency and fairness in contracts and by creating a standardized credentialing form for use by all insurers. The Ohio law is based, in large part, on a similar transparency law enacted in Colorado in March 2007. More