Send Comment Letters – Staff and Physicians

Only two more days left –please act today!
We need to send CMS comment letters by October 7, 2006 at the latest. Our goal is to send at least 10,000 letters to CMS. There seems to be a misunderstanding in some people’s minds. The global cut is 5.1%. It is 12% for anesthesiology and 16% for radiology. The cuts are not across the board and not uniform. The increase in payments for evaluation and management services is approximately 37%. They will be reducing practice expense mostly of the procedures by at least 10% for budget neutrality. Unfortunately, interventional pain management falls into a group where the cuts are much steeper for office procedures. On average, reductions will be 12% to 38% but they are as high as 58%. If you are doing procedures in a facility, cuts are 1-5%. Once again, fee schedules are provided. The link for these schedules is: http://d1724106.u29.globalhosting.com/fe eschedules.htm

It is imperative that each and every physician send a comment letter to CMS. It is not just physicians who should write, however; staff, patients, friends, and anyone who is a US resident can write a letter with their opinion. Comment letters must be submitted (one original and two copies) to CMS at the following address:
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services,
Department of Health and Human Services,
Attention: CMS-1321-P
P.O. Box 8015
Baltimore, MD 21244-8015

All comment letters must be sent by Oct. 07, 2006. Also please send 1 copy to your Representative in the House and 1 copy to each Senator. A sample comment letters can be found on the ASIPP Web site: http://www.asipp.org/documents/ModelPhysici anCommentLetter.doc
Comment letter appropriate for staff and patients http://d1724106.u29.globalhosting.com/docu ments/StaffandPatientCommentLetter.

It is also imperative that we continue to send the letters to Congress as soon as possible and until November or until the cut is fixed. Congress needs to know that we are going to suffer a whole lot more than other specialties. That way we may be able to prevent the drastic cuts and also put a brake on these increases for evaluation and management services for at least 1 year and figure out a way to work on this issue after we get the practice expense survey results. ASIPP has provided a link to Capwiz so that you can easily send your letters. The Capwiz link, as well a link to copies of the letters can be found on the ASIPP home page at http://www.asipp.org

Sample letters are located on the ASIPP home page: www.asipp.org (to send on personalized letterhead), or you may send your congressional letters through Capwiz by the links below. Physicians should follow the link provided to the Capwiz Web site: http://capwiz.com/asipp/i ssues/alert/?alertid=9037126&type=CO Once on this site you simply insert your name and mailing information and the letter is automatically sent for you.
Staff members should follow this link for their letter: http://capwiz.com/asipp/i ssues/alert/? alertid=9037151&type=CO
Patients can go to Capwiz and sign their letter as well: http://capwiz.com/asipp/ issues/alert/?alertid=9037151&type=CO

Immediate action is needed. Without support of each and every physician in the country we won’t be able to survive. Please get your colleagues, staff, patients and friends to support these issues. Let congress hear from you today.

Stay on top of the issues affecting interventional pain management, know your elected and appointed officials and contact the media in your area. You can make a difference by getting involved! Find out who represents you on Capitol Hill, go to Capwiz: http://d1724106.u29.globalhosting.com/Alert.htm

As we enter into discussions with CMS regarding the practice expense survey, we are faced with the need to increase our 09 interventional pain management specialty designation. Currently CMS is claiming there are too few interventional pain management physicians, consequently this will significantly weaken our strength as we deal with issues related to practice expense survey.

We need every member to join this effort. ASIPP would like to know if you have changed your specialty designation to 09. If you are not an interventional pain physician and do not practice interventional pain management 50% of the time, you should register as pain medicine (72). This is extremely important; this is the one opportunity we have to prevent radical deterioration of our specialty. If we do not act, we can only blame ourselves for our demise.

ASIPP is also working with ISIS and AAPM to improve the registration of specialty designation. We need to hear from you as to how you are registered so that we can work with CMS and AMA on this issue. A survey letter will arrive to all members soon but you can also find the survey letter on the ASIPP Web site

Click here to download the CMS form to change your specialty designation.

The cost of living keeps going up, but a recent study finds that the cost of healthcare is rising even faster. The national survey reported the cost of employee health care coverage rose 7.7 percent this year, more than double the overall inflation rate and well ahead of the increase in the incomes of workers.

The 7.7 percent increase was the lowest since 1999. But the average cost to employees continued an upward trend, reaching $2,973 annually for family coverage out of a total cost of $11,481.

A New Jersey pain management physician was indicted by a state grand jury Sept. 26 on charges that he bilked Medicare and three private health insurers by filing fraudulent claims totaling nearly $600,000 (New Jersey v. Feit, N.J. Super. Ct., No. 06-09-00108-S, indictment 9/26/06).

Frederic Feit, who operated a medical practice known as Modern Pain Therapy in Freehold, N.J., from 1996 through 2004, was charged with two counts of second-degree health care claims fraud and one count of second-degree theft by deception, New Jersey Insurance Fraud Prosecutor Greta Gooden Brown said in a news release.

Feit is alleged to have filed claims seeking reimbursement for nerve block injections used to alleviate pain when in reality he had administered intramuscular injections using narcotics such as Demerol or morphine, which are less invasive and less costly.

This “upcoding” for services resulted in the submission of a total of $589,850 in false claims to Medicare, Aetna Insurance Co., Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, and Empire Insurance Co., state prosecutors alleged.

To obtain morphine and Demerol, Feit wrote phony prescriptions and submitted false claims to Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, the government alleged. Read more at: http://www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases06/pr20 060926a.html

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt yesterday approved a five-year, $3 billion experiment by New York State to reorient its Medicaid program to take care of more people in their homes and communities with an eye toward enhancing patient satisfaction, eliminating waste and improving the economic viability of the program.

New York’s Medicaid program currently covers nearly 4 million beneficiaries at an estimated annual cost to the state and federal governments of $43 billion. Today’s approval is said to set the state on a course of eliminating excess waste with unused hospital and nursing home beds, building creative new care solutions in homes and communities and shifting greater emphasis to preventive programs such as disease management.

The Florida Supreme Court has handed a final defeat to doctors who fought for years to place stringent caps on attorney fees in medical malpractice cases.

The court ruling last Thursday finalizes an earlier decision that lets patients waive a constitutional limit on legal fees in medical malpractice cases that voters approved two years ago.

The final rule establishes the fee schedule for DEA registration and reregistration fees relating to the registration and control of the manufacture, distribution and dispensing of controlled substances and listed chemicals. Specifically, the final rule revises the fee schedule for controlled substances and List I chemical handlers so that all manufacturers, distributors, importers, exporters, and dispensers of controlled substances and of List I chemicals pay an annual fee, by registrant category, regardless of whether they handle controlled substances or List I chemicals.

This rule is effective November 1, 2006. The new fee schedule will be in effect for all new applications postmarked on or after November 1, 2006 and for all renewal applications postmarked on or after November 1, 2006.

To see the final rule go to: http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/fed_regs/r ules/2006/fr0829.htm

Medicare beneficiaries’ premiums should not rise as much as originally thought now that federal officials have downgraded their projections of how much doctor care is costing the program.

The standard 2007 monthly premium for Medicare Part B, which covers outpatient physician care, will increase by $5 to $93.50 The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services estimated in July that the premium would jump by nearly $10 to $98.40 The new figure will be the smallest increase in six years

Subscribers can read more at: http:/ /www.ama- assn.org/amednews/2006/10/09/gvl11009.htm

CMS recently unveiled the results of the first Medicare Contractor Provider Satisfaction Survey (MCPSS). According to the survey, the vast majority of Medicare health care providers are satisfied with the customer service, claims processing and educational activities provided by the Medicare fee- for-service (FFS) contractors.

The survey focuses on the seven business functions of the provider-contractor relationship – provider communications, provider inquiries, claims processing, appeals, provider enrollment, medical review, and provider audit and reimbursement.

The full results of the 2006 survey are available at: http://www .cms.hhs.gov/MCPSS/