AAOS Now, January 2010
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Medicare changes coding policy for consultation services
As of Jan. 1, 2010, Medicare stopped recognizing Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes for consultation services (CPT codes 99241– 99245 and 99251–99255). Although this is a significant change in Medicare payment policy, commercial payors have not yet adopted similar guidelines for consultation services.
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Two views on health care
A broken system shatters lives By Alice Chen, MD As a leader of Doctors for America, I cannot unilaterally speak for the entire physician community. To believe so would require more hubris than anyone ought to have. Instead, our organization is founded on the principle that individual physicians each have the responsibility to speak out for their patients and for what we believe based on our everyday experiences.
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Second Look
If you missed these Headline News Now items the first time around, AAOS Now gives you a second chance to review them. Headline News Now—the AAOS thrice-weekly, online update of news of interest to orthopaedic surgeons—brings you the latest on clinical, socioeconomic, and political issues, as well as important announcements from AAOS. Fraud alert: physiciansforpatients.
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The consumer-driven cure to healthcare reform
AAHKS keynote speaker calls for tax equity, transparency, innovation “Why has this brilliant president taken on healthcare reform—a challenge that has electrocuted others?” asked Harvard economist Regina E. Herzlinger. “Because he believes it is a bad value for the money. We have a great healthcare system, great hospitals, great doctors, and—most importantly in my view—we have personalized medicine that will likely change medicine from palliative to curative.
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Medical liability reform: An update
If not caps, what are the alternatives? When the topic of healthcare reform first surfaced, many in the medical community viewed it as an opportunity to finally address our nation’s medical liability crisis. Because the early debate centered on cost containment, they hoped that instituting caps on noneconomic damages would be proposed as a means of reducing costs without compromising quality.