Last week I had the chance to attend the Cardiovascular Summit: Solutions for Thriving in a Time of Change, held in Las Vegas. The CV Summit started last year with much success and continued this year with more than 400 attendees!  It was a superb meeting that left participants with more knowledge, solutions, and next steps to thrive as physicians in a time of uncertainty and continuous change.

The meeting kicked-off with sessions on the status of health care reform in the U.S. and the potential impact on cardiovascular medicine over the next few years. The keynote address, given by Harold Miller, executive director of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, taught us ways that physicians can lead the way to a new reimbursement system that rewards quality, rather than quantity, while saving money for the health care system.

The following day covered data management and the cardiovascular service line, essentially how to work better with each other and using data to connect the dots, as well as how to implement a solid infrastructure from the get-go.

In a special workshop for congenital heart disease professionals, ACC Senior VP of Advocacy Jim Fasules, MD, FACC, shared Medicaid changes expected as a result of the Affordable Care Act, as well as widely anticipated value-based purchasing programs and their potential effects on pediatric cardiology.

In addition, due to the massive coding changes this year stemming from the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, a pre-conference session discussed appropriate documentation for those codes and concerns about audits.

Finally, the Summit appropriately concluded with sessions on leadership and governance. Workshops on finance and evolving payment models discussed contracts, horizontal integration, incentivizing physician and MLP compensation, and more, and left attendees with ways to deal with the new, evolving environment – things that they don’t necessarily teach you in medical school.

In the session on strategic change and how to keep your organization from becoming irrelevant, W. Martin, MD, eloquently stated that change never stops. There may be a reprieve between changes, but a broader vision requires a next evolution, another change. I couldn’t agree more, and it is our duty to educate ourselves and lead the change.

Special thanks to everyone involved for making this meeting a huge success, especially Howard Walpole, Jr., MBA, MD, FACC, course director of the ACC Cardiovascular Summit, and Pamela S. Douglas, MD, MACC and C. Michael Valentine, MD, FACC, course co-directors.

Be sure to check out ACC’s Facebook page for photos from the CV Summit.

Stay on top of 2013 changes and efficiently and accurately report cardiovascular services and procedures with the updated 2013 CPT® Reference Guide for Cardiovascular Coding. Visit CardioSource.org/CPT to order your copy.

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