White House Conference Call

Dear Colleagues:

Today in the evening, I participated in a White House Office of Health Reform conference call to discuss health insurance reform. The call was intended as a briefing for physicians to discuss issues related to health reform. It started at 8:35pm and lasted for an hour. The call was moderated by Dr.Kavita Patel, who serves with Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett and worked herself a practicing Internal medicine physician. According to her information ~ 1900 physicians participated and > 400 questions were submitted in advance.
After a briefing about the status of the current health reform efforts ( see http://www.healthreform.gov) Dr. Patel answered several questions submitted in writing and then also by people who queued for a life Q&A sessions.
Several of these questions can be grouped as follows but this does not represent a complete list:

1) Medicare Advantage plans and how they can be adjusted to provide competitive and similar-priced services to all Medicare recipients. This question focused on the preferred financing of CMS for Medicare Advantage plans.
2) Increased reimbursement for primary care services and emphasis on quality versus quantity of care. Dr.Patel clearly identified with practicing primary care docs because she herself experienced the grueling schedule and resulting deficiencies in quality of care.
3) Training of more primary care physicians by dramatically increasing funding for the National Health Service Corps programhttp://nhsc.hrsa.gov/. Unfortunately, she missed addressing the necessary funding increase and removing of restrictions for primary care residency positions.
4) One doctor suggested moving from a fee-for-service reimbursement system to a global fee schedule, which in my opinion is sorely needed.
5) Another doctor suggested an end-of-life conference at the White House to rationally discuss this controversial issue and to debunk the "death-panel" propaganda perpetuated by some media outlets and political pundits.
6) In a final question a doctor asked why CMS does not reimburse for preventive care services.Definitely, a golden opportunity to change the current reimbursement system to emphasize and validate our daily effortsd and hard work.

In summary, this was an excellent opportunity to connect, to listen and to ask questions in a relaxed, well organized and calm atmosphere. The focus is on primary care: to emphasize preventive services, and to provide funding for increased reimbursement.
I am pleased that rational thought can prevail and I applaud the White House of Health Reform for their efforts. They announced more phone calls in the future. I strongly urge each of you to participate and to engage in a thoughtful conversation.
Yours
Bernd

Bernd Wollschlaeger,MD,FAAFP,FASAM