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.

Entrepreneurial Opportunity — Lake Tahoe, Nevada

Florida Opportunities

Pain Medicine Fellowship Program Opportunity

Interventional Pain Specialist -- Toledo, OH

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.

We still have much work ahead of us to make an impact in the pending cuts to physician payments, office procedures, ambulatory surgery centers as well as a lack of funding for NASPER.

I urge you to take this matter seriously and begin today to send your letters to Congress. If you have already done so, continue to get signatures from your patients and encourage your colleagues to get involved as well. Today's complacency will become tomorrow's urgency.

To send a letter from yourself click on the Physician Capwiz Letter link below. You may edit the letter or send it as it is. You may send it through Capwiz or fax or mail the letter on your personal or business letterhead. The choice is yours.

We have created a link for physicians as well as a link for staff, family, friends and patients.

Please take the time to send a letter today. Additionally, we urge you to have your patients sign the letter and support this effort as well.

• Capwiz Physician Letter
• Capwiz Patient Letter
• Capwiz Staff Letter
• Capwiz Citizen Letter
  

1. Customize and print off copies of the sample
2. Identify patients' state, putting the names of their Senators and Representative at the top of the page along with the President. Only one letter with all the names is necessary (see example).
3. As your patients sign out, ask them to fill out and
4. Using the patient Capwiz link assign a staff
5. Also you can print off the ASIPP Advocacy page and post or hand out to your patients for more information
   

• Example Physician Letter
• Example Patient Letter
• Example Staff Letter
• Example Citizen Letter

Online registration is open for the upcoming Dec. specialty course in spinal cord stimulation. This intensive review course and cadaver workshop will provide a comprhehensive learning experience focusing on various aspects of spianl cord stimulation.

The course will be conucted at the famous Peabody Hotel and the Medical Education Research Institute in Memphis, TN.

Brochure

Overall illicit drug use among teens ages 12-17 is at a five year low, according to the largest and most comprehensive study of drug use in the United States, released today. But when it comes to youth, nonmedical use of painkillers continues to be an area of concern, with more recent initiates (2.2 million) than any illicit drug, reveals the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH).

Wisconsin physicians face stiff reductions in state Medicaid spending if the governor and legislators fail to agree on a state budget soon. Doctors fear that Medicaid reductions will ultimately damage patients' access to the medical system.

Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle plans to place 20% of the state's Medicaid budget off-limits each month because the Republican-led State Assembly will not approve a corresponding amount -- $363 million -- in cigarette taxes and hospital assessments he asked for in his fiscal 2008-09 biennial budget proposal. The Senate passed a bill reflecting Doyle's budget plan, but the Assembly approved a competing measure. The two bills are now in conference committee.

AMANews

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) has reintroduced legislation (S 243) he sponsored in the 109th Congress that would limit noneconomic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits to $750,000, according to CQ HealthBeat reports.

Ensign said that the bill would cap noneconomic damages for a single health care provider at $250,000 with a total limit of $750,000. The legislation would not limit economic damages, but it would limit attorneys' fees. According to Ensign, the bill is modeled after a Texas law that has helped reduce medical malpractice insurance premiums in that state. The AMA in a statement said the Texas law has kept physicians' malpractice premiums down and improved patients' access to care. Ensign in a news release said, "Medical liability reform works, and it's turning the tide against frivolous lawsuits and outrageous jury awards." Democrats and trial lawyers opposed the measure last session and "will likely oppose it again" this session, according to CQ HealthBeat (Kaiser Daily Reports, Sept. 12, 2007).

The U.S. Justice Department is suing the former general counsel for Tenet Healthcare, Christi Sulzbach, alleging she illegally certified to HHS that the company was in compliance with federal laws even though she was aware of physician contracts at North Ridge Medical Center in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., that violated prohibitions against self-referral.

The Justice Department Tuesday filed a lawsuit lawsuit against Christi Sulzbach, the former general counsel of Tenet Healthcare Corporation.he lawsuit alleges that Sulzbach violated the False Claims Act.

Federal officials alleged that Sulzbach submitted false certifications to the Department of Health and Human Services which allowed Tenet to bill Medicare for millions of dollars in claims that it was not entitled to receive.

LA Times

Interventional Techniques In Chronic Spinal Pain is now availabe for purchase and all pre-order purchases have been shipped. Each book comes with a complimentary CD of the book.

Interventional Techniques in Chronic Spinal Pain, is the premier manual for interventionalists. With detailed descriptions of practical techniques in interventional pain management this is a must have publication for all interventioanl pain physicians.

If you have not yet ordered your copy, you can do so by visiting the ASIPP Web site.

ASIPP Publishing

Although the rainy season was coming on fast, Zainabu Sesay was in no shape to help her husband. Ditches had to be dug to protect their cassava and peanuts, and their mud hut's palm roof was sliding off. (New York Times - S. Leone, Sept. 10, 2007)

Like millions of others in the world's poorest countries, she is destined to die in pain. She cannot get the drug she needs -- one that is cheap, effective, perfectly legal for medical uses under treaties signed by virtually every country, made in large quantities, and has been around since Hippocrates praised its source, the opium poppy. She cannot get morphine.

New York Times

House Democrats on Tuesday called off a plan to present their own FDA overhaul bill to the House Rules Committee and resumed negotiations to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of legislation that would reauthorize the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, CongressDaily reports. PDUFA expires on Sept. 30 (Edney, CongressDaily, 9/19). The negotiations have focused on two provisions: one that would require pharmaceutical companies to receive FDA approval before changing drug labels to reflect new safety information and another that would reduce pediatric exclusivity from six months to three months if the drug brings in profits of more than $1 billion annually (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 9/18).

Kaisernetwork.org