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BOARD OF
COUNCILOR'S REPORT
National Orthopedic Leadership Conference 2009
Dear Colleagues:
Greetings from the National Orthopaedic Leadership Conference in
Washington D.C. In recent years this meeting has been
coordinated with the State Societies Strategy meeting and has
included visits to capital hill to lobby on behalf of our state
society and our academy. This years attendees were your AOS
president Stephen Curtin, M.D., your councilors Marc Rosen, M.D.
and Steve Shapiro, M.D. and Joel Goode, M.D. of Tucson.
This years State Societies Strategy meeting featured talks on
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president Obama's stimulus package
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IT technology
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evidenced based medicine
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state battles over scope of practice and ancillary services
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physician-industry relationship and the DOJ
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tools to increase states membership
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risk
purchasing tools
This is an important year in Washington as
there is a good chance health care reform will happen. The
democrats have a large majority in the house and will"
reconcile” legislation through the senate. Although specifics are
still unknown there appears to be a push for universal coverage,
a redistribution of money and access to primary care. Our
message from the AAOS was “ACCESS TO SPECIALTY CARE” emphasizing
that few primary doctors are well trained enough to treat most
musculoskeletal diseases. We also stressed our role as front
line providers of trauma care and our desire for a coordinated
trauma system.
Healthcare information technology (HIT) is
an issue that is receiving a lot of attention. Specific standards
are not yet available but will forthcoming soon. There will be
financial incentives for compliance of approximately $40k per
physician over 5 year sand penalties for non compliance. It will
be important to be conversant with these activities and, if you
are considering a move to a EHR system, that it conforms with
the government's
standards.
In summary, we came away from this years
meeting with both excitement and fear of the prospect of health
care reform. While Orthopaedic surgeons are in a leadership role
in the AMA we nonetheless only represent 2-1/2% of the
workforce. It is unclear where the “house of medicine” will
align with respect to designing a new healthcare delivery
system. We spoke loudly for a seat at the table for Orthopaedic
surgeons as decisions are made.
We urge all of you to remain informed and engaged in both local
and national activities. The future of our profession hangs in
the balance. We should all be contributing to the AAOS PAC which
has become the largest specialty PAC but has only 26% of the
AAOS membership contributing.
Respectfully submitted,
Marc Rosen, MD
Steve Shapiro, MD
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