Interventional pain management is under the gun! It is important to become involved and have your opinion heard for the numerous reasons we have presented over the past few weeks, but basically, you must get involved to preserve our specialty and provide appropriate care for Americans. CMS has proposed drastic changes to the regulations for ASCs for calendar years 2008 and 2009.

Please write immediately to CMS - comments must be recieved by 5:00 p.m. onNovember 6, 2006. For sample letters to be customized by you, your staff, patients, and family, along with directions for mailing, click on the following link. CMS Letter

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) has just released a study which offers support to ASCs in the fight against the proposed rule. According to MedPAC, the differences between costs and quality outcomes in various cases performed in ASCs and hospital outpatient departments are insignificant.

Read the MedPAC findings

A little more than five years ago, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer initiated a high-profile campaign against pain doctors who prescribe high doses of opioids — drugs such as Oxycontin, Vicodin and codeine.

Lockyer made Frank Fisher, MD his example. Lockyer and other California prosecutors likened Fisher to a crack dealer. Then, to a mass murderer. Fisher was charged with multiple counts of drug distribution, fraud, and most sensationally, 15 counts of murder. The state seized his assets. His bail was set at $15 million and he faced a possible life sentence.

Read the story at Fox News.com

Federal health-care officials are moving to shrink loopholes that let doctors profit from referring patients for MRI scans and other costly medical tests. They also are examining whether physicians across the nation are billing Medicare appropriately for scanning done in their offices, says the Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, has proposed new rules designed to crack down on the practice of "self-referral," in which a doctor has a financial interest in tests or other services he or she orders for a patient:

Read more from the Wallstreet Journal article.

The early registration discount deadline for the December Cadaver Workshop and Comprehensive Review Course has been extended to Nov. 25.

The Course will be held on December 1-3, 2006 in Memphis, TN. To better accommodate our participants, a basic level has been added to the course. Additionally we have added a new feature of concurrent lectures geared specifically to the course levels of basic, intermediate, and advanced.

A federal advisory panel to the Department of Health and Human Services unanimously approved today a draft of minimum requirements for participation in the Nationwide Health Information Network.

According to Simon Cohn, MD, chair of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics’ Workgroup on National Information Infrastructure, the 37-page draft should help HHS address healthcare IT policy issues.

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CMS has announced a new pay-for-performance demonstration aimed at small- to medium-size group practices that care for Medicare beneficiaries with chronic conditions.

The three-year Medicare Care Management Performance (MCMP) demonstration will be implemented next year in Arkansas, California, Massachusetts and Utah, the same states that served as pilots for CMS’ Doctor’s Office Quality- Information Technology project (DOQ-IT). Approximately 800 practices in the four states will take part in the new demonstration.

According to the MCMP project director, there may be slots available for practices not currently participating in the DOQ-IT program. Interested physicians in the participating states, who are willing to work to implement health information technology, care coordination and data reporting features in their practices, should immediately contact their local QIO. In order to participate, physicians must be the main primary care provider for at least 50 fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries in a medium-sized or smaller practice. Recruiting is scheduled to continue through the early spring, and the demonstration should “kick off” by summer.

More than 12,400 people have accessed the article “A randomized, controlled trial of spinal endoscopic adhesiolysis in chronic refractory low back and lower extremity pain,” earning it a “highly accessed” flag on BioMed Central’s online journal, Anesthesiology. The article, authored by Laxmaiah Manchikanti, Mark V. Boswell, Jose J. Rivera, Vidyasagar Pampati, Kim S. Damron, Carla D. McManus, Doris E. Brandon and Sue R. Wilson, has been on the web site since Aug. 1, 2006. The “highly accessed” graphic appears on the journal’s table of contents and search results to identify those articles that have been especially highly accessed, relative to their age, and the journal in which they were published. See it at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcanesthesiol/

Also “highly accessed” on BioMed Central is the May 2004 article “Prevalence of facet joint pain in chronic spinal pain of cervical, thoracic and lumbar regions” by Laxmaiah Manchikanti, Mark V. Boswell, Vijay Singh, Vidyasagar Pampati, Kim S. Damron and Carla D. Beyer. This article has been accessed by more than 26,000 people since it first appeared on BioMed Central. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471- 2474/5/15

You can also access the article, “Risk of whole body radiation exposure and protective measures in fluoroscopically guided interventional techniques: a prospective evaluation.” The article, written by Laxmaiah Manchikanti, Kim A. Cash, Tammy L. Moss, Jose Rivera, and Vidyasagar Pampati, was published in 2003, has been viewed over 11,300 times, and as the articles mentioned above, is available to open access on the BioMed Central Web site: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471- 2253/3/2