In the coming months, Congress likely will revisit the one-year moratorium it placed on the HHS rule mandating a national donation policy. It also could consider the reauthorization of the National Organ Transplant Act, which placed UNOS as contractor in charge of the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network. The AMA's American Medical Accreditation Program, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the National Committee for Quality Assurance recently stepped up efforts to coordinate their work on health care performance measures. The move comes at a time when the finishing touches are being put on a new national organization designed to assume much of the responsibility for measuring and reporting on U.S. health quality. The head of the forum planning committee has assured members of the PPMC that they would have a seat at the table of the new organization.
Employers expect the price increase trend to worsen next year.
Participants used the meeting as an opportunity to learn from each other's past skirmishes on the issues and to seek common ground for working together on legislative issues in the future. Each panel included experts and a representative from a state society that had had some success in dealing with the issue. Other topics covered during formal sessions included barriers to pain management, external appeals and independent review of adverse treatment decisions, crafting an effective plan to allocate tobacco-settlement dollars, initiatives to encourage organ donation and uses, and abuses and safeguards of medical information. Applied Voice Recognition Inc., a Houston firm hopes to sell physicians on the idea of Internet-based transcription services. Physicians would access AVRI's transcriptionists through an intranet, an Internet-based network open only to select users.