Page 26 - Delaware Medical Journal August 2015

AMA Meeting
HIGHLiGHTS
The high level issues from the 2015 AMA Annual Meeting held June 6-10 in Chicago have been identified in this report.
The Medical Society of Delaware was represented at the meeting by MSD AMA Delegate and Delegation Chair, Kelly Eschbach, MD; Alternate Delegate, Janice Tildon-Burton, MD; Nancy Fan, MD, MSD President; Stephanie Guarino, MD, AMA Resident
and Fellow Section Alternate Delegate; and Mark Meister, MSD Executive Director.
Stephen Permut, MD attended as a member of the AMA Board of Trustees and became Chair of the Board of Trustees at an AMA Board of Trustees meeting following the adjournment of the AMA Annual Meeting.
In his address to the 2015 Annual Meeting, AMA Executive Vice President and CEO James L. Madara, MD noted that crafting a culture of innovation and collaboration across all aspects of health care — from medical education, to patient care, to advocacy — will propel physicians to continue shaping the future of medicine.
Outgoing President Robert M. Wah, MD congratulated physicians on undertaking numerous challenges that, once solved, will strengthen the physician-patient relationship and make the practice of medicine better, including the elimination this year of Medicare’s Sustainable Growth Rate formula.
Incoming President Steven J. Stack, MD, an Emergency Medicine physician, noted the many opportunities he has had to witness life-changing moments in the emergency department, while acknowledging that the day-to-day challenges of government regulations, health system changes, payers questioning procedures, and medical liability concerns can overshadow those moments. Hope for the future for physicians comes from joining together to reach common goals, he said, similar to the way lives are saved in emergency departments.
POLICY DECISIONS APPROVED BY
THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES INCLUDED:
MAINTENANCE OF CERTIFICATION (MOC).
New policy enacted by the AMA House of Delegates directs the AMA to work with the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) to:
Develop fiduciary standards
and full transparency related to the costs of preparing, administering, scoring, and reporting MOC exams and to ensure MOC does not lead to unintentional economic hardships for its member boards.
Ensure that any assessment be used to guide physicians’ self- directed CME study.
Provide specific content-based feedback after any assessment to physicians in a timely manner
ICD-10 IMPLEMENTATION.
The House of Delegates passed policy calling on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) not to withhold claim
payments based on coding errors, mistakes, or malfunctions in the ICD- 10 code set for two years following implementation to avoid financial disruptions to facilitate a smoother transition that will allow physicians to continue providing quality care to their patients.
SOLUTIONS TO THE
OPIOID EPIDEMIC.
Physicians underscored their commitment to reverse an epidemic
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Del Med J | August 2015 | Vol. 87 | No. 8