W 58 PCMA CONVENE APRIL 2013


henConvene reached out to more than 30 high- level medical meeting professionals across a broad swath of medical practice areas to learn how the


Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) — aka the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare — is changing the way they’re planning their medical meetings, conferences, and conventions, only a handful responded. The director of convention operations for a major medical society whose annual meeting draws tens of thousands of physician attendees said she was “uncomfortable” addressing the topic at this time. The ramifications of the PPACA for her convention were being discussed at the board level, she said, but not yet at the committee or staff level.


While parts of Obamacare have already been implemented, most of the major provisions — aimed at decreasing the number of uninsured Americans, lowering the overall costs of health care, improving health-care outcomes, and streamlining the delivery of health care — will be phased in by January 2014, with the remaining provisions enacted by 2020. Change is clearly at hand. What’s behind the seeming lack of responsiveness from medical


meeting professionals? In a word, uncertainty. And they’re hardly the only ones in the health-care community who are unsure how the Affordable Care Act will play out. At the end of last year, The Physicians Founda-


tion — a nonprofit organization whose mission is “to advance the work of practicing physicians and help facilitate the delivery of health care to patients” — released its 2013 Watch List, which


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