When we recognized last week that we were not likely going to be among the limited number of invitees to President Obama’s much ballyhooed Health Summit (we were in competition with CEOs of major businesses, health insurers and mega institutions), I did some serious scrambling and secured a place for ACC President Doug Weaver, M.D., F.A.C.C., to participate. Doug did an excellent job of distinguishing ACC from the relatively few other physician representatives by focusing on the things we can be accountable for fixing in terms of improving quality and reducing unnecessary spending using our commitments to science, quality systems, the NCDR, appropriate use criteria and other innovations. Weaver challenged the new administration to work with us on solving problems.

Tort reform was raised, and President Obama noted it was an issue. He said, even considering defensive medicine costs, it is not seen by OMB as one of the mega-cost-issues that is wildly out of control, and that this Congress does NOT want to take it on. At least he sees it needs to be considered. For ACC, it will be a major aspect of our state advocacy activities, and we will keep emphasizing the impact of defensive medicine costs.

ACC leaders and I recognize that practicing members out there are worried about more than quality, variation, and rising costs. Many practices are becoming increasingly non-viable -- even in cardiology -- and we have to fight for fair and reformed compensation systems too. But we can’t do that if we’re not at the table. We only get there by agreeing to be accountable on fixing things only we physicians and teams can fix, and so that’s we are emphasizing. Have patience out there. The irony is that we’ll do a better job of protecting compensation by keeping the interests of patients and the health of society first.

The President wants a bill to come of Congress for final “mark-up” by June (three months!); and he expects the reform process to begin being seriously implemented as soon as in 12-15 months. That’s an aggressive timetable. Hold on to your britches.

Most importantly, we weren’t on the menu this time — we were at the table, and we will be for the upcoming discussions related to how this reform process might best unfold. We somehow need to get the non-involved practices to better understand what the College is doing related to the opportunities of being at the table, and the serious threats of not being there!

The ACC is in the process of collecting comments from members on health care reform and will feature them in a post later this week. Check back for updates!

*** Image from Flickr (Cedric). ***

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