Texas Cardiac Center
Interventional cardiologist job opportunity in Lubbock, Texas to fill an unexpected vacancy in a group with a large practice and involvement in many clinical trials.
If interested, please forward your CV to Texas Cardiac Center, Attn: Beverly Winn, 3710 21st St, Lubbock, TX 79410 or fax to (806) 780-5445.
Kathleen Sebelius that those benefits are outweighed by the risks of financial conflicts of interests that can arise when physicians refer patients to centers in which they share ownership.
Instead, it is nonphysician-owned hospitals that “have eliminated the com- petition, and the result will be greater financial conflicts of interest, higher health care costs, fewer choices for pa- tients, and less innovation,” the TMA brief states. Such competition also helps ensure that non-PHOs “venture to im- prove their care.” Richmond, Va., attorney Scott C. Oostdyk, lead counsel for the hospitals, said the plaintiffs are weighing their appeal options, which include going through Medicare’s administrative ap- peal process, requesting a hearing before the full 5th Circuit, or appealing directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. Following enactment of the 2010
http://txcardiac.com E-mail:
bwinn@txcardiac.com
health reform legislation, Texas Spine & Joint Hospital had to stop construction on a $30 million planned expansion of its hospital, which began in 2008. Ac- cording to legal documents, Physician Hospitals of America has more than 160 member hospitals and had anticipated that, barring the PPACA restrictions, 294 Medicare-certified physician-owned hos- pitals would exist by the end of 2010. Oostdyk said the ruling means that
NEW!
“there are going to be fewer high qual- ity medical facilities available for patient use, and patients are going to have lim- ited choice, which we didn’t understand to be one of premises of the PPACA.” TMA continues to advocate for the
“This publication should be a part of the curriculum for all medical students and residents. The author portrays a comprehensive understanding of physicians and their challenges in the business side of medicine.”
Susan K. Blue, MD Fort Worth, TX
Order today by visiting
www.texmed.org/publications
It’s official: ICD-10 starts in 2014
Federal officials’ decision to go ahead with the ICD-10 coding system does not improve patient care and only helps
32 TEXAS MEDICINE October 2012
repeal of the federal limitations on physician-owned hospitals and promote responsible ownership of all types of health care facilities.
bureaucrats, Texas Medical Association President Michael E. Speer, MD, said af- ter the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the new sys- tem would take effect Oct. 1, 2014. The ICD-10 announcement was con- tained in a news release about a CMS rule establishing a unique health plan identifier system officials say will save physicians time and money. But Dr. Speer says the ICD-10 system “is a huge burden that deeply affects ev- ery practice. Instead of working with 13,500 diagnostic codes, we now will need to learn and use more than 70,000 different codes.” It’s also expensive, he said, costing solo physicians as much as $83,000 each, and group practices of up to 10 doctors as much as $250,000. Because of objections from TMA and others, federal officials delayed ICD-10 adoption from October 2013 to October 2014.
TMA now offers an easy-to-use elec-
tronic ICD-9 to ICD-10 GEMs mapping software to help practices with the tran- sition. The downloadable tool will help you quickly and easily identify which ICD-10 codes replace the ICD-9 codes your practice uses now. It allows you to:
• Search by code, code description, or key words;
• Create and save a “favorites” list of commonly used codes; and
• Develop and print quick reference lists.
Log on to
www.texmed.org/Gems Tool/ to access the tool.
TMA will hold seminars to help phy- sicians and their staff prepare for the transition. Future issues of Texas Medi- cine will have more information when it becomes available.
TMA Practice Consulting is available for customized and private, on-site train- ing programs, as well. Call (800) 523- 8776. n
Amy Lynn Sorrel is an associate editor of Texas Medicine. You can reach her by telephone at (800) 880-1300, ext. 1392, or (512) 370-1392; by fax at (512) 370-1629; or by email at
amy.sorrel@
texmed.org.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68