Advocacy in Action - Don’t Abdicate, Advocate

Carter L. Alleman, J.D.

With the new administration and Congress, I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to come advocate and share your stories and experiences with your members of Congress. DO Day on the Hill will provide you with the best opportunity to share with Congress your story. ACOS and AOAO are sponsoring a surgeons’ breakfast the morning of DO Day for all members who are attending, at the JW Marriott Washington D.C., 1331 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20004-1796.

I spent the last couple of weeks sitting in meetings and conferences on health care policy development and implementation. While policy experts discuss how healthcare should work, when Congress is included in these conversation, nothing works quite right. Congress does not know what it is to be a doctor, whether training or day to day work. It does not know the best ways to treat patients, nor does it know the best way to practice medicine, yet Congress will still enact legislation without much input from the medical community because it believes it wants to help.

DO Day on the Hill is April 5, 2017. Registration is available here. Registration closes February 24, 2017. Sign up today!

Congress is working on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. What comes next is still being decided. This is your opportunity to lend your opinions and ideas on how healthcare should work in the United States. What comes next is anyone’s guess; however, this is a chance to make a difference and make healthcare work for everyone.

DO Day on the Hill is April 5, 2017. Registration is available here. Registration closes February 24, 2017. Sign up today!

This marks the first year of the new Quality Payment Program (QPP), which houses the two new payment models, Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and alternative payment models (APMs). APMs were created to fix the specialty medicines need to have a payment model which reflects the uniqueness of specialty medicine from primary care. A main component to making the QPP work is that Congress needs to provide oversight to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and make sure that CMS is enacting the legislation as Congress intended. It is now more imperative than ever to discuss the parts of the QPP that are not working and need to be revised so that physicians and their patients can thrive under the QPP.

The entire program is supposed to begin in 2019. Congress needs to hear from doctors about their fears if the programs are not completed in time and how these changes need to be made so that physicians and not payers oversee a patient’s care. It took over 16 years to get sustainable growth rate (SGR) reform, the new programs cannot start off on the wrong foot.

DO Day on the Hill is April 5, 2017. Registration is available here. Registration closes February 24, 2017. Sign up today!

I heard at different meetings and conferences from Representative Pat Tiberi (R-OH), Senator Brian Schatz (D- HI), and other elected officials, that they all want to hear from you. They want to hear your stories and concerns because they want to make healthcare in the United States the best it can be. Healthcare is a top issue today; it may even be the top issue today and we can make a positive impact and chart a new course for the delivery of care. I hope to see you all at DO Day on the Hill.