Vital Times 2017 - 7

I have also been very concerned with the problem of
how to communicate with members. Over and over,
I've heard people ask, "What exactly does CSA do?" No
matter how many blast emails we send, or CSA Online
First columns are written to keep members informed,
we know that only a small percentage of our messages
are even opened.
Clearly, our members are bombarded with
electronic content continuously, and we don't want
to contribute to the problem. But we need to keep
our members informed. To get a better grasp of
how to move forward, I appointed a Task Force
on New Communication Strategy, chaired jointly
by Ryan Field, MD, and Roya Saffary MD, and
including Harrison Chow, MD, Jeffrey Cashin, MD,
Ajit Rai, MD, and Rexford Pearce, MD. They have
recommended further social media outreach to
residents, and the creation of a residents' page on our
website, both of which have been implemented. The
Task Force will look for information from the market
research project to inform further recommendations.

Continuing the Work of 2016-17
In truth, the presidency is only the mid-portion of a
three-year cycle of service: first as president-elect, then
as president, and then as immediate past president
and chair of CoLDaN (Committee on Leadership
Development and Nominations). During my year
as president-elect, in 2016-17, I gave a great deal of
thought to the things I wanted to work on and to help
CSA accomplish. Among these were:
Prioritizing Practice Management
Our goal is to give the important topic of practice
management a higher priority within CSA, and
increase the regulatory and educational assistance
we provide to our members to help their practices
succeed. We separated the Legislative and Practice
Affairs Division (LPAD) into two component
committees: one for Legislative Affairs, chaired this
year by Past President Narendra Trivedi, MD, FASA,
and one for Practice Management, chaired by Keith
Chamberlin, MD, MBA.

With the guidance of experienced LPAD Chair
Jeff Poage, MD, the new Committee on Practice
Management has been working with our lobbyists,
Bryce Docherty and Vanessa Cajina, on assuring a fair
playing field for out-of-network payments following
the passage of AB 72. The devil is in the regulatory
details. We have added a new page to our website
specifically with resources about AB 72, which we
encourage you to visit and use as a reference whenever
questions arise.
Appended to this report is the most recent work
product, a letter to the California Department of
Insurance concerning the complicated calculation
of the Average Contracted Rate (ACR). Accurate
determination of the ACR will be key, going forward,
to making sure that CSA members do not receive the
default out-of-network payment, which is 125 percent
of Medicare, rather than a fair rate consistent with the
market.
We are also closely monitoring the progress of new
contract negotiation between anesthesiology groups
and third-party payers. We suspect, as we have from
the start, that payers will be reluctant to negotiate
fair contracts since low out-of-network rates would
be to their advantage. We can't let that happen. We
are making sure that legislators and regulators in
Sacramento are aware of the threat.

(continued)

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https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csvt/vital-times-2022
https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csvt/vital-times-2021
https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csvt/2020
https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csvt/2019
https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csvt/2018
https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csvt/2017
https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csvt/2016
https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csvt/2015
https://www.nxtbook.com/allen/csvt/2014
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