Dear Colleague,
Following today’s CMS Board of Directors meeting (the first of my presidency), I wanted to provide you a timely report of the outcomes.
Your thoughts and feedback on these outcomes from today’s meeting are very important to me. I would like to hear from you:
president@cms.org
.
1. Report of Workgroup on Health Care Costs and Quality
– based on recommendations of the workgroup the BOD voted to:
- Approve priority areas for partnership with the Denver-metro Chamber of Commerce (DMCC) on efforts to reduce costs and increase quality.
- Approve out-of-network legislative specifications and directed the workgroup to continue consulting on details with our members.
- Approve the workgroup to create an alternative to the Colorado Division of Insurance network adequacy waiver rules that ensure adequate networks for patients.
Click here
to review the proposals in greater detail
2. Payer Complaint Tool
– In response to consistent feedback from members regarding payer issues, the Colorado Medical Society created a tool to track specific patterns of inappropriate denials and inconsistencies among payers.
Results of this pilot program demonstrated patterns of business practices by health plans that are prohibited under Colorado law.
Before scaling the program to the entire membership, the board voted to roll this out in a stepwise fashion by starting first with two physician billing firms serving multiple specialties. Performance will be carefully assessed over the coming year, with necessary upgrades made before the tool is released to all members as a member benefit.
Click here
to read a description of the payer complaint tool
Click here
to see a screen shot of the payer complaint tool
3. Central Line Policy Proposals
– The board took action on three proposals submitted by members through Central Line.
• Marijuana Policy Update
• Transparency / Out of Network
• Mandatory Childhood Vaccines – no exemptions
You will soon receive an email from your local representative board-member; please take a moment to respond (no login required) and let us know if the board “got it right” on these proposals.
4. Firearm Safety
– After a lengthy discussion at the September meeting, the board voted to push reconsideration of the proposal for an update to CMS firearm policies to the November meeting. After a thorough review of the proposed and existing policy and current law, the board voted to combine existing CMS policy into one succinct, overarching policy statement. This new, overarching policy will be placed on Central Line for a membership vote in January 2019.
5. In-Person Meetings and the CMS Annual Meeting
– Earlier this year, the board of directors suspended the 2019 Annual Meeting to ensure adequate funding to meet the extraordinary challenges facing physicians and patients in the 2019 legislature and to investigate the best approach to meaningful-in-person member-engagement. Today, the board launched a study to determine whether to continue the Annual Meeting in some form or transition to new and innovative ways to meaningfully engage members.
Click here
to read the board’s backgrounder and reply with your suggestions.
6. Financial and other fiduciary duties
– The board approved a consent calendar that included minutes and reports from various CMS workgroups and committees and rosters.
Click here
to review the consent calendar and let me know if you would like to receive the financial summaries from August-September, 2018.
Thank you very much for taking time to read this report and for sending me your comments in a reply to this email.
With gratitude,
