cians that they may need six months of reserve operating capital to financially survive the implementation period. Mr. Flint says successful transition to
ICD-10 in individual physician offices depends on the physician adequately documenting the conditions he or she is treating in patients’ charts. Because of
the specificity of the new ICD-10 codes, physicians will have to include much more specific information in their charts, such as whether a broken arm is the right or left arm and much more. “If you don’t document, the coder can’t code and the claims can’t be paid,” he said.
In January, AMA President Peter Carmel, MD, wrote U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to stop imple- mentation of ICD-10. The February 2012 issue of Texas
Medicine is a special issue that tells phy- sicians what they need to do to get ready for ICD-10. Physicians can earn 1 hour of continuing medical education credit in ethics and/or professional responsibil- ity by reading the articles and taking a short test.
Physicians in the lead In the keynote address at the TMA Win- ter Conference, former AMA President Nancy Nielsen, MD, PhD, said the Af- fordable Care Act (ACA) gives physicians an opportunity to take the lead on how health system reform will be achieved. Dr. Nielsen, senior advisor to the Cen-
Former AMA President Nancy Nielsen, MD, told the TMA Winter Conference audience that the Affordable Care Act will allow physicians to lead health system reform efforts.
ter for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation, said her new agency — created by ACA — gives physicians several ways they can take the lead in designing alternatives to traditional fee-for-service medicine, including pilot programs for account- able care organizations and bundled payments, a comprehensive primary care initiative, a stroke and heart attack pre- vention project, and more. Recently, the center named 73 “inno- vation advisors” across the country who will “spread what we learn” through these initiatives, Dr. Nielsen said. One of those advisors is Richard Young, MD, of the JPS Physicians Group in Fort Worth.
At TMA’s Winter Conference Facebook media lab, Debra Osterman, MD, right, received assistance with setting up a Facebook account from Brittany Rosales, a medical student at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.
10 TEXAS MEDICINE March 2012
SGR crisis Finally, Dr. Carmel, the current AMA president, told attendees the pending 27-percent cut in Medicare physician payments being driven by Medicare’s Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula is truly a “crisis situation.” “It would absolutely crush seniors’ and
military families’ access to care,” Dr. Car- mel said.
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