Symposium on Health Reform.....

[physasst]

So, just got back a couple of days ago from a health policy/health reform summit in DC. I was the only PA in attendance for the whole thing, although someone from AAPA was there for a small part of the time.

 

All the major players were there, including Rohack from the AMA, Ignagni from AHIP, Clancy from AHRQ, Kirch from the AAMC, etc.etc.etc. Along with a bunch of Congressional folks and others, inlcuding several presidents of consumer watch groups, and others. My highlight was getting to have a long discussion with Tim Johnson from ABC News, Gilifillan, and the editor in chief of Health Affairs about PA contributions to healthcare.

 

Great meeting, similar to most that I have been too. Most of us in the arena are all on the same page with the primary objectives...

 

The number one objective coming out of this meeting was: CHANGE the way medicine is paid for, and eliminate the archaic fee for service payment model. All other changes will be driven by money. We discussed ACO's, although, as I pointed out at one point, there is not a single ACO in existence yet, so although they look promising on paper, we have not a single shred of quantitative data.

 

Still the number one objective voted on by the attendees was changing the payment structure.

 

Whether this means adopting a model like Prometheus, which I support, or a different model is yet to be seen.

 

I am also trying to decide if I want to continue to practice clinically, or move into a full time administration and/or research position. Several intriguing possibilities came up at this meeting.

 

Anyway, felt like everyone should be kept up to date on these things, so there you are.

[SocialMedicine]

Thank you for the update. Why were PA academics and AAPA administrators not in attendance? Not trying to be offensive, just curious. It seems like the primary research interest of most PA academics/PA program faculty is workforce and PA utilization issues. Shouldnt this of been one of the big conferences to attend for them?

 

Im sending you a PM ....

[jmj11]

So, just got back a couple of days ago from a health policy/health reform summit in DC. I was the only PA in attendance for the whole thing, although someone from AAPA was there for a small part of the time.

 

All the major players were there, including Rohack from the AMA, Ignagni from AHIP, Clancy from AHRQ, Kirch from the AAMC, etc.etc.etc. Along with a bunch of Congressional folks and others, inlcuding several presidents of consumer watch groups, and others. My highlight was getting to have a long discussion with Tim Johnson from ABC News, Gilifillan, and the editor in chief of Health Affairs about PA contributions to healthcare.

 

Great meeting, similar to most that I have been too. Most of us in the arena are all on the same page with the primary objectives...

 

The number one objective coming out of this meeting was: CHANGE the way medicine is paid for, and eliminate the archaic fee for service payment model. All other changes will be driven by money. We discussed ACO's, although, as I pointed out at one point, there is not a single ACO in existence yet, so although they look promising on paper, we have not a single shred of quantitative data.

 

Still the number one objective voted on by the attendees was changing the payment structure.

 

Whether this means adopting a model like Prometheus, which I support, or a different model is yet to be seen.

 

I am also trying to decide if I want to continue to practice clinically, or move into a full time administration and/or research position. Several intriguing possibilities came up at this meeting.

 

Anyway, felt like everyone should be kept up to date on these things, so there you are.

 

Thanks for going Mike and representing us. Did you do this on your own dime or did Mayo or other entity pay for it? I think you should shoot for Noseworthy's position.:>)

[physasst]

Thank you for the update. Why were PA academics and AAPA administrators not in attendance? Not trying to be offensive, just curious. It seems like the primary research interest of most PA academics/PA program faculty is workforce and PA utilization issues. Shouldnt this of been one of the big conferences to attend for them?

 

Im sending you a PM ....

 

Not really, I did send the invite to many PA's, and the AAPA did send their VP of Health Policy, Bob McNellis who was there for part of the meeting, but this meeting WAS NOT dedicated to PA's, and really workforce discussions were pretty minimal. This conference was about convening healthcare leaders to discuss the next steps going forward with healthcare reform, and now that the bill has passed, where do we go? It was more about the concept of value in healthcare, and how do we define value, and how do we achieve it. There was a small discussion of workforce, but to be honest, I only heard the term Physician Assistant maybe 3 or 4 times throughout the meeting. And virtually every time, it was as a "Physician's Assistant".

 

It was a panel format, and then every table which you were assigned to a head of time, had various people at it. For example, mine had myself, Congressman Fortenberry's healthcare advisor, the CEO of Lahey Clinic, the CEO of the Minnesota Hospital Association, a family practice physician who functions in a VP role for a LARGE group in the Carolina's, Tim Johnson from ABC News, and a medical student. We would listen to the panel, have interactive dialogue with questions, and then a question would be posed, with each table having 45 minutes to formulate an answer, and then all answers would be collated. THEN, each attendee was given an electronic voting pad, and we would vote on which items were generated from the discussion time as far as importance. The final answers would be ranked, voted on again, and an agenda would be formulated.

 

I have been to a number of these now, and I can count on one hand the number of other PA's I see at the meeting.

 

NOW, if you want to talk workforce, we have several well known workforce researchers...Eric Larson, Perri Morgan, Rod Hooker, Jim Cawley and even David Asprey as well. Heck, Rod is internationally known and respected as a major workforce researcher. He is a plank holder on the international medical workforce collaborative.

 

Many of these people are present at the sine non qua of workforce meetings which I usually attend as well, the Annual AAMC Physician Workforce Research Meeting. Last year, there were 2 people from the AAPA, I think 3 from PAEA, as well as a number of PA workforce researchers in attendance.

 

So, policy doesn't always equal workforce, if that makes sense.

 

We need to encourage more the creation of more PA researchers. We need to encourage greater participation in policy as well, but many PA's don't understand it, and many just want to go home at the end of the day.

 

I'm not sure of the answers....

[physasst]

Thanks for going Mike and representing us. Did you do this on your own dime or did Mayo or other entity pay for it? I think you should shoot for Noseworthy's position.:>)

 

 

I convinced Mayo to pay for most of it, and I paid for part of it myself. Hehe....I don't think John would like that very much...LOL...