tion, mirroring the TMB rule on how long doctors need to keep a patient’s medical record.
Patients’ safety protected In just about every session, midlevel practitioners push a number of bills to allow them to practice medicine without a medical school education. It was no different in 2011.
Nurse practitioners backed at least
three bills that would have allowed them to independently diagnose, pre- scribe drugs, and order tests. None of them passed.
Meanwhile, physical therapists sought direct access to patients without a physician’s referral; optometrists want- ed authority to perform certain surger- ies and prescribe or administer oral and other medications; chiropractors tried to protect their licensing board against lawsuits from other health licensing agencies when their rules intruded on the practice of other health profession- als; and podiatrists sought to push their scope of practice beyond the foot. TMA killed nearly all of those bills and stripped virtually all of the objec- tionable provisions from Senate Bill 1001, which would have allowed chiro- practors to form business partnerships with physicians.
Working for you and your patients In 2011, TMA did what it has done since a pioneering band of physicians founded it in 1853 — work to improve the health of all Texans. And, as in past years, the association followed goals established by the TMA Board of Trustees as its road- map to the future.
Here is a sample of what TMA did for patients and physicians in 2011.
• Saved millions of dollars in payments to practices by persuading Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas to suspend the Procedure Plus Evaluation and Management (E&M) Service Reim- bursement Methodology that would have skimmed 5 percent of the pay- ments when the E&M was performed on the same day as a procedure.
• Recovered $1.6 million for thousands of doctors through the Hassle Factor Log program, including money re- covered from incorrectly processed claims, lost or delayed Medicare en- rollment applications, and other pay- ment issues.
• Created the Calendar of Doom (www
.texmed.org/doom/) to prepare doc- tors for new rules and regulations.
• Helped 11,000 physicians with prac- tice issues.
• Used TMA’s provider relationships to save practices more than $20 million.
• Helped 1,761 Texas physicians—the most in the nation — reach “mean- ingful use” through regional exten- sion centers, as well as other educa- tion and outreach initiatives.
• Prodded the American Medical As- sociation to lobby federal officials against their plans to force physicians to begin using the ICD-10 coding sys- tem in 2013, a move that prompted them to delay it until 2014.
• Provided expert comments on pro- posed Internal Revenue Service rules on accountable care organizations (ACOs) that led the IRS to substan- tially modify those rules to allow rec-
ognition of physicians’ valuable role in ACO development with nonprofit hospitals.
• Supported TMA member physicians in significant litigation to protect the right of physicians to own a hospi- tal, protect physicians from losing staff privileges due to discrimination based on national origin, and pro- mote transparency in nonprofit hos- pitals’ financial affairs.
• Retained 95 percent of association membership, the highest in the na- tion among state medical societies.
• Began in-depth analysis of members’ needs to identify specific physician segments and matching them with targeted TMA advocacy, services, and benefits.
• Launched the Me & My Doctor blog to help patients and doctors find a new and better way to talk to each other by creating a dialogue between patients and doctors where they can discuss important health care issues.
• Began the TMA Diabetes Reporting Pilot Program supporting 26 physi- cian practices with the technical re- quirements to meet reporting require- ments for the Bridges to Excellence programs of the Physician Quality Reporting System and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas.
Renew your membership today
There is still much to accomplish, and we need your support. Our voice is strongest when we work to- gether. Renewal questions? Contact the TMA Knowledge Center at (800) 880-7955 or
knowledge@texmed.org.
26 TEXAS MEDICINE June 2012
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