In a letter sent Monday to the conference committee charged with addressing the Medicare physician payment issue, the AMA and 108 physician associations urged Congress to redirect excess projected war funds to repeal Medicare’s failed sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula. A devastating 27 percent cut in payments is scheduled for March 1.

“Using funds that will not be needed as the wars wind down to protect health care for men and women in uniform and our nation’s seniors is the fiscally responsible thing to do,” AMA President Peter W. Carmel, MD, said in a news release.

Permanently repealing the SGR grows more expensive each time Congress implements a short-term payment patch instead of addressing the issue. Since 2005, the cost to repeal the SGR has grown from $48 billion to nearly $300 billion, and that amount will double again in five years if Congress continues on this course. Meanwhile, using excess projected war spending this year could resolve the SGR problem without adding to the nation’s growing deficit.

Physicians can call the AMA’s grassroots hotline at (800) 833-6354 to tell their members of Congress to use this opportunity to repeal the SGR and protect patients, physicians and taxpayers. Patients can do the same by calling (888) 434-6200.

Visit http://www.elabs10.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=x8pbgr,vlfk,2ke5,28ex,3vqc,5bt7,a1i4 to read more in an AMA news release.

2. ICD-10 is a huge burden; AMA tells Congress to stop its implementation

In a letter to Congress last week, the AMA urged lawmakers to stop the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s required implementation of the ICD-10 code set and to call on stakeholders to find an appropriate replacement for ICD-9.

Implementation of ICD-10 would require physicians and their office staff to contend with 68,000 codes, a fivefold increase from the current 13,000 codes. Based on AMA policy adopted in November, the Jan. 17 letter states that ICD-10 would create significant burdens on the practice of medicine with no direct benefit to individual patient care.

The letter also states that implementation of ICD-10 will compete with other costly transitions associated with quality and health information technology (IT) reporting programs. Physicians face an Oct. 1, 2013, compliance deadline to begin using the ICD-10 code set.

In the letter, James L. Madara, MD, the AMA’s executive vice president and CEO, writes that stopping implementation of ICD-10 and finding “an appropriate replacement for ICD-9 will help to keep adoption of [electronic health records] and physician participation in quality and health IT programs on track and reduce costly burdens on physician practices.”

Visit http://www.elabs10.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=x8pbgr,vlfk,2ke5,juls,f6b1,5bt7,a1i4 to learn more about the ICD-10 code set.

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