Last week brought more meetings with Congressional leadership about the Medicare Rule nightmares. The recent Cardiology Advocacy Alliance (CAA) visits were helpful. We met with the Grassley’s staff this week (Senate Finance minority), and they were somewhat receptive to indexing cardiology payment for echo, stress testing, SPECT, etc., to the hospital (HOPPS) schedules, IF appropriate use criteria use and transparency were included. Appropriate use criteria could get us out of this hole, folks -- AND, the ACC is getting ready to be able to launch point-of-care AUC systems that could make this idea real!

This is where we need to go! Meanwhile, the sign-ups to the Gonzalez bill, which would mitigate some of the effects of the physician fee schedule, keep growing. Congressman Dingell (D-MI) -- a truly powerful influencer of Dem leadership -- agreed to sign up last week. This is big news.

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