ASIPP is offering a new feature for those who advertise on our Postions Wanted section of the ASIPP Website. As a service to our advertisers and our members, we will list the link to each current job posting.

Interventional Pain Specialist -- Paducah, KY and Marion, IL

Interventional Pain Medicine Physician – St. Cloud, Minnesota

Entrepreneurial Opportunity -- BE/BC Fellowship Trained Pain Physician(s)

Musculoskeletal Interventionalist -- Dallas, Texas

100% Pain Practice For an Anesthesiologist or Physiatrist -- Wisconsin

Pain Management Openings Fellowship Opportunities -- Florida

Interventional Physiatrist -- Wilmington, North Carolina

Pain Specialist -- Wisconsin

PainCare Holding, Inc.

According to a report by the Government Accountability Office, the method by which physician fees are adjusted according to geographic boundaries should be revised.

The GAO issued two recommendations for CMS; that CMS examine and revise the payment localities using an approach that is uniformly applied to all states and based on the most current data and that it update the payment localities periodically.

According to the report, CMS has said it will consider GAO's first recommendation for eszmination and revision of the payment localities, but continue its approach of updating the localities when interested parties raise concerns and on its own initiative.

In addition, the agency also issued a proposed rule that would update Medicare payment for services in HOPDs under the OPPS and would set new payment rates for ASCs under the revised system effective for services in calendar year 2008.

For the first time in nearly a decade, ASIPP, AAPM, ISIS ,with the American Medical Association (AMA), and more than 70 other medical specialty societies, have worked together to coordinate a comprehensive multi-specialty survey of America's physician practices during 2007.

The purpose of the survey is to collect up-to-date information on physician practice characteristics in order to positively influence national decision makers while further developing and refining AMA and ASIPP policy. Thousands of practices will be surveyed from virtually all physician specialties to ensure accurate and fair representation for all physicians and their patients.

The unique aspect of the project is that it explores both the clinical and business side of medical practice. The reason for this is that it is important for the nation's policy-makers to learn what is truly involved in running a practice that can provide patients with expert care but is able to do so in a sustainable way. A complete understanding of the landscape and the requirements for today's care is critical. The data obtained will be an important source of information for the AMA and ASIPP. It will represent practice concerns to national policy-makers that will lead to policy initiatives that not only help in the short-term but will allow future generations of doctors to continue providing superior care to their patients.

A small section in this study pertains to practice expenses and the amounts that are attributable to you. Please encourage your staff to make these numbers available to the Gallup interviewer. This is a vital part of the research and we need to have accurate and complete data. This information remains confidential; Gallup does not identify individuals or entities participating in this research to any of the participating organizations.

The Gallup Organization has been retained to conduct the PPI survey among a representative sample of practices in each of the participating specialties. The Physician Practice Information survey is an important and necessary vehicle for positive change. Please watch for this survey in the coming weeks and do your part in completing it in a thorough and accurate manner if randomly selected to represent our specialty.

FAQs Practice

House Democrats on Tuesday introduced legislation that would reduce payments to Medicare Advantage plans and increase the federal cigarette tax by 45 cents per pack to fund SCHIP and make revisions to Medicare, the AP/Houston Chronicle reports (Freking, AP/Houston Chronicle, 7/24). The legislation, called the Children's Health and Medicare Protection Act, would reauthorize SCHIP and increase funding for the program by $50 billion over five years. The expansion would allow an additional five million to six million children to enroll in the program, according to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair John Dingell (D-Mich.) (Kaiser Daily Health Report).

Under the bill, a scheduled cut in Medicare payments to physicians would be reversed and physicians would receive a 0.5% increase in fees for each of the next two years. In addition, the bill would make revisions to the system that sets spending targets for Medicare outlays for physicians' care. Rather than setting a single spending target for all Medicare care, the system would sort outlays into six different categories with different spending targets for each category. The categories include: primary and preventive care; other evaluation and management services; anesthesia; imaging; major procedures; and minor procedures.

Senate Finance Committee Approves SCHIP Expansion Legislation The Senate Finance Committee on July 19 voted 17-4 to approve legislation that would reauthorize SCHIP and increase funding for the program by $35 billion over five years, the Los Angeles Times reports (Alonso-Zaldivar, Los Angeles Times, 7/20).

SCHIP expires on Sept. 30. Committee members on July 13 finalized an agreement on SCHIP reauthorization that would increase five-year funding for the program from $25 billion to $60 billion by raising the federal cigarette tax from 39 cents to $1 per pack.

Read more on Kaiser Daily Health Report, New York Times

The Comprehensive Interventional Cadaver Workshop and Review Course, Oct 5-7, 2007 will feature discography techniques for the advanced section. The course also offers basic and intermediate instruction with relitive and informative lecture reviews preceding the hands-on instruction.

The course is a CME activity which is ideal for physicians who are seeking board certifiication or who desire an in-depth review of interventional techniques. Don't miss this excellent opportunity for professional enhancement.

View our online brochure and register today!

Meetings

Office surgery practices will be subject to more stringetn accreditation and reporting reaurements starting Jan. 20, due to S6052, which was signed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer in July. The four key points to the new law are:

• Requires office-based surgery be performed by physicians in a setting that has obtained and maintained accreditation from an entity approved by the state Health Commissioner
• Requires that operating in an un-accredited setting would constitute professional medical misconduct.
• Requires physicians to report adverse office- based surgery events including patient deaths and unplanned hospital admissions within one business day to the Department of Health Patient Safety Center.
• Requires that individual reports be considered confidential and not be subject to the Freedom of Information Law or discovery.

New York Legal Update

Pain specialists' message that opioids are not just for patients with cancer is not quite getting through to physicians in training. (AMANews.com - Aug 6 issue)

Across the board, residents were much more reluctant to prescribe opioids for noncancer patients, said a recent survey of 72 residents. That could be due to poor training, inexperience or fear of legal or regulatory scrutiny, study authors said. Researchers asked residents to react to the statements on a scale of zero ("strongly disagree") to 10 ("strongly agree"). The figures represent an average of the students' responses.

AMA News

The Part B Insider recently addressed the frequently asked question of "Can physical therapists (PTs) bill Medicare for their own services?" According to Pat Larabee, a coding specialist for InterMed, PTs can bill under their own provider numbers. Further, PTs can also bill "incident to" physician's services if they don't have their own provider numbers.

If the physical therapist is a member of a physician group, then they should bill the claims under the group's ID number, with the therapist listed as the rendering provider, according to Stephanie Fiedler of Loeb Troper of NY.

The bottom line is you should always check individual state requirements. Visit the CMS Website for more information on billing for PT.

NHIC's physical therapy billing guide

See CMS Billing Scenarios for PTs and OTs