July 2008

(07/29/2008)  --  The Academy and its sister organization, the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, or STFM, have for many years celebrated the contributions of AAFP members and others involved in providing high-quality primary care, recognizing their accomplishments with a number of awards. Aug. 1 marks the application deadline for three such awards. More

(07/24/2008)  --  FDA officials approved the licensure of two new combination vaccines for children last month. Both vaccines protect against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and polio; one of them also protects against invasive disease caused by Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib. More

(07/24/2008)  --  The AAFP has made its news vehicle to members -- AAFP News Now -- a completely electronic product by transitioning the print version of the publication into a PDF version that members can access each month beginning in September. More

(07/24/2008)  --  Family physicians treating seniors for mental health disorders, such as depression, recently got a pay raise from the federal government. For 18 months beginning July 1, 2008, HHS will increase the physician fee schedule by 5 percent for the provision of specified mental health services, including psychiatric therapeutic procedures furnished in the office or other outpatient facility settings. More

(07/23/2008)  --  HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt hosted a media conference call July 21 to provide details on the federal government's latest effort to encourage physician adoption of electronic prescribing. AAFP President Jim King, M.D., of Selmer, Tenn., and CMS Acting Administrator Kerry Weems joined Leavitt on the call. More

(07/23/2008)  --  One of the nation's leading retail health clinics, Take Care Health Systems, recently informed the AAFP that it would not renew its commitment to the Academy's list of Desired Attributes of Retail Health Clinics. The action fueled AAFP's already heightened concerns about retail health clinics expanding their scope of practice beyond the treatment of simple acute health concerns. (Discuss this story on the AAFP News Now bulletin board.) More

(07/23/2008)  --  Change is afoot in the retail health industry as companies look to expand the scope of practice for their clinics beyond simple acute health problems. Some states are saying "yes" to such expansion, seeing it as a way to address physician shortages, rising health care costs and emergency department overuse. But expanding retail clinics' scope of practice is the wrong solution when it comes to addressing these health care problems, and it's not in the best interest of the American public. The AAFP opposes such an expansion because of the potential negative impact on the quality of care in these clinics. More (Members Only)

(07/23/2008)  --  The AAFP has launched a new online classroom, dubbed LearningLink, that provides Academy members with CME in multiple formats. The free program focuses on specific diseases or medical conditions, with pain management as the first topic. More

(07/22/2008)  --  The first phase of a Medicare durable medical equipment, or DME, bidding program launched July 1 has been delayed. Family physicians in the 10 areas selected for the program, which includes certain zip codes in North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Florida, Pennsylvania, California and Puerto Rico, may want to inform their Medicare patients about the delay. More

(07/22/2008)  --  The American Cancer Society, or ACS, has boosted the size of the awards it offers in a program designed to assist in developing primary care physicians who will pursue academic careers with an emphasis on cancer control. More

(07/16/2008)  --  The nation's health care delivery and payment systems primarily are organized to support the diagnosis and treatment of acute or episodic conditions, resulting in fragmented, ineffective and costly care for people with chronic diseases. That's according to a new study conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change, or HSC. "Getting What We Pay For: Innovations Lacking in Provider Payment Reform for Chronic Disease Care" found "widespread acknowledgement that current provider payment methods do not encourage efficient or effective delivery of chronic disease care." More

(07/16/2008)  --  Congress has overridden President Bush's veto of a Medicare payment bill and enacted legislation that postpones steep reductions in the Medicare physician payment rate this year and next. In successive votes on July 15, the House and then the Senate easily overrode the president's veto of H.R. 6331, enacting legislation that maintains current funding levels for the rest of this year while providing a 1.1 percent payment increase in 2009. More

(07/16/2008)  --  The Academy has approved provisional recommendations from the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, on the use of rotavirus vaccine in infants and young children. The provisional recommendations offer guidance on administration of the two vaccine products currently licensed to prevent rotavirus gastroenteritis in these patients. More

(07/16/2008)  --  Effective July 1, RxHub and SureScripts, the nation's two largest electronic prescribing, or e-prescribing, networks, consolidated their operations to become SureScripts-RxHub. The merger forms a "single, secure nationwide network" for e-prescriptions and bodes well for family physicians. More

(07/15/2008)  --  It was a rare day on Capitol Hill July 9. A critical vote was imminent. No one knew whether the Senate could muster the votes to end the filibuster of H.R. 6331, the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act -- the bill that would rescind the disastrous 10.6 percent cut in Medicare physician pay. Previously, the Senate had fallen just one vote short of stopping the filibuster before recessing for Independence Day. During that break, Republican senators who had voted against the bill faced tremendous heat for their vote, but none of them, even if they wanted to change their vote, wanted to be that one vote that would end the filibuster. More (Members Only)

(07/15/2008)  --  President Bush's veto of legislation that blocks a 10.6 percent reduction in Medicare payments to physicians could result in a paperwork tangle for family physicians who submitted Medicare payment claims on or after July 1, especially because CMS has pledged to reprocess the claims if the veto is overridden. More

(07/10/2008)  --  The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, announced today it has strengthened the marketing code it uses to guide relationships between the pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies it represents and physicians. More

(07/09/2008)  --  Welcome home, rural family doctors! You now have an online "community" designed just for you by the AAFP. The Rural Online Community, which launched July 7, is packed with features for rural FPs, as well as for family medicine residents, medical students and others interested in rural family medicine. With this new resource, rural FPs can stay on top of news that's important to them and their patients. They can share information with one another. They also can access other resources to support quality rural health care. More

(07/09/2008)  --  AAFP members looking for ways to help patients improve their overall health are invited to register for a CME webcast designed to teach physicians how to encourage patients to add heart-healthy foods to their diets. The webcast is part of the Academy's Americans in Motion, or AIM, fitness initiative. More

(07/09/2008)  --  The AAFP has created a series of video vignettes as part of a viral campaign designed to promote the role of family medicine in today's health care system to a global audience. The five videos are available on the video-sharing Web site YouTube, as well as on a number of online news outlets and weblogs that focus on health care. More

(07/09/2008)  --  Proponents of electronic prescribing were encouraged recently when the DEA proposed regulations that would allow e-prescribing of controlled substances. If adopted, the new regulations would give physicians and other prescribers the option of adding Schedule II drugs to the other medications they routinely prescribe electronically. More

(07/09/2008)  --  If you've watched news coverage of the ongoing floods in the Midwest or the recent disasters in China and Myanmar and wondered how best to help, here's a quick and easy way to do it: Donate to the AAFP Foundation. You can select the type of disaster aid donation you wish to make, and the funds will be used accordingly. More

(07/09/2008)  --  When it comes to immunizing people with asthma against influenza, there's plenty of room for improvement. That's according to an article in the June 20 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, or MMWR, that assessed specific aspects of influenza vaccination coverage during the 2005-2006 influenza season. More

(07/09/2008)  --  The Senate has passed an 18-month Medicare physician payment bill that negates steep reductions in the Medicare physician payment rate for the remainder of this year and next year. The legislation now will go to President Bush. More

(07/08/2008)  --  The number of people forgoing or delaying health care jumped dramatically between 2003 and 2007, signifying a fundamental reduction in Americans' overall access to health care, says a recently released tracking report from the Center for Studying Health System Change. More

(07/03/2008)  --  Subscribers to AAFP's Home Study program might have noticed the most recent FP Essentials monograph -- the June edition -- has a new look. The changes were made at the request of Home Study program subscribers and come at no additional subscription cost. More

(07/02/2008)  --  As AAFP News Now reported earlier this year, the NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute halted the intensive glucose-lowering arm of the Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes, or ACCORD, trial because of concerns about the number of deaths in patients who were participating. Results from that arm of the study now have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, but the troubling deaths that led the NIH to halt the study arm have not yet been explained. More

(07/02/2008)  --  A $161.8 billion supplemental spending bill the U.S. Congress recently passed includes provisions that will temporarily prevent the Bush administration from reducing federal Medicaid matching funds for graduate medical education, or GME. More

(07/02/2008)  --  If you're about to prescribe an alpha blocker for an older adult with hypertension or a prostate or urinary retention problem, consider whether the patient has cataracts before you prescribe. That's because the use of alpha blockers -- especially tamsulosin, marketed as Flomax -- is associated with an eye condition that makes cataract surgery more difficult, even in patients who no longer use these drugs. More

(07/01/2008)  --  Unbelievable. Outrageous. Unconscionable. These are just a few of the adjectives that spring to mind when it comes to describing the U.S. Senate's inaction on legislation to address the Medicare physician pay cut last week. More (Members Only)

(07/01/2008)  --  The Bush administration has announced it will delay the processing, but not necessarily the payment, of Medicare claims to give Congress more time to pass a bill blocking a 10.6 percent reduction in the Medicare payment rate. However, the administration's action should not result in delayed Medicare payments to physicians, said Kent Moore, the AAFP's manager of health financing and delivery systems. More