claudia

To: Members, Georgia Chapter of the ACC

Last week fourteen of your fellow members spent three days in Washington advocating on behalf of you and your patients. We met with members of our congressional delegation as well as members of their office staff in both Senate offices.

Photos of our delegation at work.

Our message on your behalf was:

• Congress must exercise very careful oversight of the MACRA implementation. Congress and CMS should work with medical societies to ensure that the implementation is not administratively burdensome and does not interfere with the delivery of high-quality cardiovascular care.
• We enlisted support of HR 3355/ SB 488 , which will allow supervision of cardiac rehabilitation services by mid-level providers. This will open up the opportunity for particularly smaller rural areas to operate and maintain cardiac rehabilitation services for their cardiovascular patients and expand the scope of practice for our team of cardiovascular care Associates.

As we all experience the evolution of our health care delivery system, the role of governmental regulation becomes increasingly more critical. Is this process, this regulation that will have a profound effect on how you’re able to care for your patients and what type of office will be delivering that care. It is paramount that you understand your role in actively attempting to influence the changes and stay connected to ACC and your Georgia Chapter.

Your membership in ACC helps as the ACC is seen extremely favorably on Capitol Hill as the one specially society that has focused so much on data-driven decision-making. However, your contribution to the ACCPAC allows us to have ongoing one-on-one discussions with our legislators who can and will influence these regulations on our behalf.

If any of you have any questions about our ongoing activities, please feel free to call me or Jerry Lutz, who is our PAC representative to the ACC. Hope to see many of you in November at our annual chapter meeting.

Joe Wilson, MD, FACC

Chair, GA/ACC Advocacy Committee