I think it finally put them on the defensive. You know, I think the whole effort went very flat. I haven't either, I think you're right. You know it was a very volatile topic at the last delegates meeting. There's a lot of anxiety about this amongst doctors, and there are still some people who feel the AMA is still working with HCFA to make some of these happen.
Doctors are concerned that it's still going to be too much cookbook, and too much detail.
The Office of Management and Budget said if you're going to change the RVS code defined by work, and not product, then we need to know about it. The specialist's societies said, however, that the coding changes still don't adequately address the single system examination, and they couldn't use the new codes. So, they went back to HCFA, which then issued some new codes, or formulas, in 1997. That's when the profession took notice. We said wait a minute, this is too onerous, too difficult.