Legislative issues

[24858]

The issue to focus on is "pass through funds". Current law allows some rural hospital to use reasonable costs based Medicare Part A pass through funds to employ or contract with anesthesia assistants or nurse anesthetists, but this cannot be used for physician anesthesiologists. There are bills being introduced S. 1444 (the Medicare Access to Rural Anesthesiology Act of 2013) and HR 4781, an identical companion legislation. Please write your legislators to make sure they vote yes to rid us of this physician detrimental legislation. Help protect patients.

http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

above is a link to find your representation.
Thanks for your time and dedication to our speciality, our future, and for saving patients lives.

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[BobBarker]

Thanks for posting. As a future rural anesthesiologist, I was unaware of this legislation. I forwarded the information to my CEO and encouraged him to contact our delegation. For this to succeed rural hospitals have to support it.

 

[jwk]

This has been part of the ASA/ASA-PAC legislative agenda for several years.