Patient Safety Experts to Participate in Summit

William J. Robb III, MD; Paul Zemaitis, MPH

Despite the many technological advances in health care, surgical adverse events leading to patient harm still exist. As a leader in the patient safety movement, AAOS aims to help healthcare organizations work together to address the many issues and challenges involved in providing safe, high-quality care. Together with the American College of Surgeons, AAOS will sponsor the National Surgical Patient Safety Summit (NSPSS), Aug. 4–5, in Rosemont, Ill.

OIG Says "No Bonus Points" for Having a Compliance Plan

Cheryl Toth, MBA

If your practice is targeted for a Medicare audit, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) will no longer give you points for having a compliance plan on the shelf. Unless you've operationalized that plan into an active program, it's not going to garner any leniency with the auditors, according to Inspector General Daniel Levinson, who announced new compliance guidance at the 2016 Health Care Compliance Association conference.

How Do "Physician Compare" Websites Affect Orthopaedic Practice?

Dionisio Ortiz III, MD

With the current focus on patient satisfaction and the consumer-driven healthcare economy, a number of independent websites enable patients to rate individual physicians whom they encounter. The impact of these websites on orthopaedic practice is continuing to be elucidated. Many for-profit websites compare and contrast individual physicians and surgeons. This article reviews some of the most well-known physician comparison websites and examines their implications for practice.

Performance Measures Update: Orthopaedic Preferred Measure Set

The Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) began in 2007 as the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative, a voluntary, incentive-based program for practitioners that was designed to better ensure high-quality healthcare services for Medicare beneficiaries. The program as it is known today will sunset on Dec. 31, 2016, as required under the Medicare Access and CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).

The "PROs" of Using AJRR to Meet CJR Requirements

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) model, which first went into effect on April 1, 2016, requires hospitals within 67 geographic regions (known as metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs) to bundle payments for lower extremity joint replacement (LEJR) procedures. Because data must be submitted from July 1 to Aug. 31, 2016, the 794 hospitals in areas designated as MSAs should be conscious of the steps they will take to qualify.

Acronyms 101: Sifting Through Alphabet Soup, Part 4

Douglas W. Lundy, MD, MBA; Thomas C. Barber, MD

In this our final article on healthcare policy acronyms, we address the acronyms and abbreviations seen in bundled payments and various practice-related terms. We understand that more could certainly be written on acronyms, but we believe that our four-part series has covered the most commonly used terms. As the MACRA legislation continues to unfold, there will undoubtedly be further proliferation of acronyms in the healthcare policy conversation.

Why Workers' Comp Matters

J. Mark Melhorn, MD

The current workers' compensation system is a medical driven legal compromise, commonly described as the "grand bargain" between employers and labor. The impact of the workers' compensation system was clearly stated as long ago as 1982, by Florida District Court of Appeals Judge E.R. Mills, in the case of Singletary v. Mangham Construction (418 So.2d 1138). According to Judge Mills, "Workers' Compensation is a very important field of law, if not the most important.