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News and announcements
Advocacy Roundup
DPH electronic prescribing requirement and EHR interoperability
The Department of Public Health (DPH) proposed regulations to implement an electronic prescribing requirement. This mandate, opposed by the MMS, was part of Governor Baker’s omnibus CARE Act—legislation passed last summer aimed to curb the opioid epidemic. These regulations mandate federally-compliant, secure electronic prescribing of drugs and devices by January 1, 2020.
The proposed regulations list exceptions for when written or oral prescriptions may be allowed and outline a waiver process for prescribers and organizations who believe they are unable to comply with this mandate. The proposed regulations and details for the submission of comments
can be found here. A public hearing will be held on June 27, and DPH will be receiving comments until July 2, 2019. MMS will be offering extensive testimony on these proposed regulations.
MMS President Maryanne C. Bombaugh, MD submitted comments to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) regarding interoperability, information blocking, and the ONC certification program. The MMS supported many of the proposed rule's
provisions including (1) requiring certified health IT developers to adopt and implement new requirements around application programming interface (API) design, (2) ensuring unrelated software programs can communicate with one another, and (3) expanding direct oversight of
Electronic Health Record (EHR) developers/vendors and increasing the standards and penalties on EHR vendors to prevent data blocking. The MMS also suggested areas where the proposal could be improved.
Dr. DiSiena honored by Berkshire District Medical Society as Community Clinician of the Year
Berkshire District Medical Society named Dr. Michael DiSiena as their 2019 Community Clinician of the Year, an honor recognizing his contributions and professionalism as a physician. The Community Clinician of the Year Award was established in 1998 by the Massachusetts Medical Society to recognize a physician from each of the organization’s 20 district
societies who has made significant contributions to his or her patients and the community.
Dr. DiSiena is a surgical oncologist with Berkshire Health Systems and assistant professor of surgery and pathology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is an attending surgeon at Berkshire Medical Center and Fairview Hospital.
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MMS individual claims consultation days
The Massachusetts Medical Society is hosting in-person Insurance Claims Consultation Days (ICC). ICC days are designed to allow MMS member physicians and/or their practice staff to schedule 30-minute appointments with health plans to focus on
the adjudication of troublesome claims.
Available in three locations, representatives from health plans will be on-site to review claims with you to facilitate claims processing.
Schedule your appointment at
massmed.org/ICC2019.
The following health plans are participating: Allways Health Partners, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Fallon Health, Harvard Pilgrim HealthCare, Health New England, MassHealth, Medicare, Tufts Health Plan, UnitedHealthcare, and Unicare.
Water safety and drowning prevention
The Society has resources available for members to share with patients, especially those who are parents or caretakers of young children.
A downloadable flyer is available on the website along with other patient safety resources for patients and physicians.
Health plan provider directory: Free webinar
In an effort to improve the accuracy of health plan provider directories, streamline the process across plans, and reduce the overall administrative burdens for providers, HealthCare Administrative Solutions and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts have both engaged
the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare's (CAQH) DirectAssure to develop an electronic solution for use in the Massachusetts market. The rollout of this new tool is expected to begin this summer, starting with individual and behavioral health providers.
The Massachusetts Medical Society would like to invite you to a one-hour webinar training session on updating provider directory information using the new CAQH Direct Assure tool. The training session will be held on:
- Tuesday, June 18, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
To register, please contact us today at PPRC (781) 434-7702 or Bissan Biary
@bbiary@mms.org. We will follow up and send you a link to register.
Renew your membership
Thank you to the 25,000+ members who have renewed. To keep your membership active for 2019, you must renew before June 19.
To avoid cancellation of your benefits,
renew today in less than 4 minutes.
Renew
Benefit buzz
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Need help with your practice? At the Physician Practice Resource Center, our goal is to ensure that you have the information, support, and resources you need to maintain a thriving practice. We are here to help physicians, and those who assist
them, find solutions to a wide range of needs – from attorney referrals to implementing current regulatory requirements to tips and research on coding and billing issues. Our consulting team can even help you with patient experience training or opening a new practice!
Feel free to contact us today for more information at (781) 434-7702 or email us at
pprc@mms.org.
Payer watch
Estimating the attributable cost of physician burnout in the United States
Workplace burnout can be measured in emotional depletion, apathy, and a decreased sense of achievement. In America, burnout across all industries is
reported at 27 percent; in contrast, physicians report a staggering 54 percent.
Researchers have observed many damaging effects, particularly in productivity and clinical outcomes, associated with physician burnout. Burned-out physicians are more likely to make mistakes in their day-to-day tasks, cut their hours, quit their jobs, or leave medicine altogether.
Because more physicians are sounding the alarm about burnout, researchers across the nation are expanding their focus into its effects. However, only a few studies have analyzed the negative financial impacts of physician burnout. One such study documented an estimated waste of $4.6
billion each year — or, roughly, $7,600 per physician.
As physician burnout leads to lower patient satisfaction and worse patient outcomes, we can expect more municipal lawsuits, higher physician turnover, and larger replacement training costs. Finances are also spent in the correction of burned-out physician mistakes.
Click below to read more about the study
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Educational programs and events
Featured online CME course
More online CME
Upcoming events and trainings
June 19: MMS Board of Trustees Meeting (by invitation only - MMS Headquarters) The next Board of Trustees Meeting will be held on June 19 from 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. at the MMS Headquarters.
July 9: You Can Do It: Buprenorphine Prescribing in Primary Care (MMS Headquarters)
This program aims to allow physicians in the primary care setting who have successfully made opioid use disorder (OUD) care a part of their daily practice to share their experiences, resources they have used along the
way, and empower attendees to start prescribing lifesaving buprenorphine therapy more regularly in their practices.
Quote of the week
"We're not telling people to drink 25 cups a day per se. If anything, if you drink within recommended guidelines, then we don't expect to see an increase in arterial stiffness compared with those who drink one cup or less a day."
— Kenneth Fung, researcher involved in Queen Mary University of London study on the effect of coffee on arteries.
(CNN)
Tweet of the week
@MassAGO
Official account of MA Attorney General Maura Healey.
What’s new in health care
Check out the most clicked-on stories from this week's MMS Media Watch.
Sign up for daily Massachusetts media roundups by email. Some publications are fully accessible only to their subscribers.
Two former NECC pharmacists sentenced (WBJ)
Gene Svirskiy of Ashland and Christopher Leary of Shrewsbury, two former clean room pharmacists at New England Compounding Center, were both sentenced this week in federal court in connection with the 2012 nationwide
fungal meningitis outbreak. Svirskiy was sentenced to 30 months in prison and one year of supervised release. Leary was sentenced to two years of probation and 100 hours of community service. Leary's first eight months will be in home confinement with electronic monitoring.
MGH researcher wants to test a potential cure for type 1 diabetes in kids (BBJ)
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have been studying a generic drug that's shown potential to
cure type 1 diabetes in adults. Now, researchers want to test the same drug in children with the disease. Dr. Denise Faustman, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital immunobiology laboratory, is applying to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Institutional Review Board for permission to run
a pediatric clinical trial on the bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, an inexpensive, generic vaccine used around the world to prevent tuberculosis. The lab is also pursuing an open-label trial, which would allow qualifying adults — and potentially children — to
access the treatment instead of going through a double-blind experiment with placebos.
Partners pulls out of talks for Rhode Island health system (Boston Globe)
Partners HealthCare announced Tuesday that it will withdraw its application to acquire Care New England Health System, the same day Rhode Island's two largest health providers and Brown University said they will resume negotiations to build a locally run academic medical center. Dr. Anne
Klibanski, the interim president and CEO of Partners, said the Massachusetts health giant decided to halt its bid to
take over Care New England "to give this effort the best possible chance for success and to provide maximum flexibility to the governor and the leadership of these three institutions." "We look forward to reengaging at the appropriate time — especially with a fully integrated local system," Klibanski said.
"We greatly value our relationship in Rhode Island [and] want to do what's best for the state and its citizens."
High-priced doctors are making even more money (BBJ)
The most expensive doctors in Massachusetts are receiving more money than in the past,
a recent state report has found, an indication that efforts to divert patients to less expensive providers aren't making meaningful progress. According to an analysis from the Center for Health Information and Analysis, the percentage of commercial payments made to the most expensive doctor's groups in the
state has been growing steadily for several years. Approximately $3.5 billion went to the highest-priced quartile of doctors in 2016 — or 68.4 percent of the $5.1 billion paid to physician groups that year. That's an increase from 2015, when $3.3 billion went to the highest-priced
quartile of doctors — or 59.9 percent of the $5.51 billion spent on physician groups that year.
