As of a meeting last Friday with other specialties, large states and AMA, it was anticipated that the Senate Finance Committee would introduce a package early this week addressing Medicare physician payment cuts. Our imaging accreditation and appropriateness criteria pilot may be included in the package. The pilot would include parallel tracks employing both ACC’s and ACR’s appropriateness criteria, since we don't have agreement with radiology on a unified set of criteria, even though staff are meeting to discuss this. We are also working to address concerns over accreditation and appropriateness criteria raised by other societies. 

These issues aside, we need to get the calls going to your members of Congress NOW. There is some concern that Congress will let the cuts go through, and come back to fix them in February or March. Congress is banking on the assumption that the cuts won’t cause physicians to change their practices and limit Medicare patients. Despite our tireless staff efforts here on the Hill, more folks need to start letting their members of Congress know how bad things are getting. Not to mention, Friday's New York Times implied that Medicare is wasting money on oxygen and other payment factors, which ironically could hurt our cause. There's no excuse for Congress not to get this fixed now. They've cut physicians for six years running. The funding for the reversal would probably have to come from cuts in Medicare Advantage insurance payments, which are 12 – 18 percent above regular Medicare. MedPAC even suggested cuts there. But, no matter how they fund reversing the cuts, we need to get the calls going this week — please.