Meeting Highlights

[RadOncRules]

For those who weren't able to attend, can anyone give some highlights of the meeting (e.g. Future of the field, new technological developments, etc). Thanks!

[bragmt]

Originally Posted by RadOncRules

For those who weren't able to attend, can anyone give some highlights of the meeting (e.g. Future of the field, new technological developments, etc). Thanks!

I was also curious about the arro lecture about the future of rad onc payment, and reimbursement, if anyone went to that and could shine some light regarding the future of our salaries it would be much appreciated by those new residents with mounting loan interest and kids getting older. Thanks!

[medgator]

Here's an excerpt from an email I got saturday that had everyone talking:

In an unprecedented policy victory for ASTRO, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced yesterday that it will NOT implement the proposed 19 percent Medicare physician payment cuts to radiation oncology for 2010! Instead, the agency will reduce radiation oncology payments by only 5 percent over a 4-year period. In other words, the proposed 19 percent cuts for next year has been significantly reduced to only 1 percent for 2010, which will start Jan. 1.

[SimulD]

Nothing too exciting. Luckily, though cold, Chicago weather wasn't horrible. The plenaries aren't going to change practice a whole lot - (1. Don't need to radiate IM nodes 2. Don't need to offer prophylactic PCI for NSCLC 3. Perhaps you should radiate the LN bed after resecting a recurrent melanoma 4. Adding hormones to a low dose of radiation to the prostate is better than just radiating to a low dose). Some of the clinical trial updates were pretty interesting and I always enjoy some of the challenging cases lectures (particularly GI). I think there was a hypo-fx prostate cancer randomized trial that seemed to show efficacy, but I just saw a press release, not the details. The president's address was unique and I liked it, but maybe a bit religious. The poster section continues to get smaller and smaller, while the commercial area is even more massive than before. Had to pay for the Elekta party on Saturday night, but it was pretty sweet. All in all, not too bad, and I wish I had more time to go to meeting stuff instead of interviewing, but nothing mind blowing.