Thank You for a Fantastic 2023 Annual Meeting!

Welcome the 2023-2024 SCOA Executive Committee:

President

Christopher Bray, MD

President-Elect

Todd Tupis, MD

Vice-President

Christopher Mazoue, MD

Secretary/Treasurer

Glen Feltham, MD

Immediate Past President

Heather McIntosh, MD

Leadership Council

​Member Slots

• Seth Bowman, MD
• Keith Gettys, MD 
• Daniel Scott, MD, MBA 
• Trey Gurich, MD
• Kristen Nathe, MD
• Peter Ramsey, MD
• Guillaume Dumont, MD
• Erik Hansen, MD
• P. Doug deHoll, MD
• Charles Daly, MD

Leadership Council

Resident Slots

• Mary-Kate Lynch, MD
• Ben Judkins, MD
• Julia Prodoehl, MD 



Board of Councilors

• Shane Woolf, MD
• S. Wendell Holmes, MD

Annual Meeting Video Recap

Congratulations to our Research and Poster Competition Winners!

Resident Research Competition Winners

1st Place

James Michael Miller, MD

Prisma Health Upstate

2nd Place

Cody Ashy, MD

MUSC

3rd Place

Justin Kung, MD

Prisma Health Midlands

Poster Winners

1st Place

J. Ryan Allen, MD

MUSC

2nd Place

Yianni Bakaes

USC School of Medicine Columbia

3rd Place

William Kelly

USC School of Medicine Columbia

Register Today for the 2024 Annual Meeting

Join us next year along the pristine shores of Kiawah Island for the 2024 SCOA Annual Meeting. Reconnect with your peers as we seek clinical and professional excellence through dynamic keynotes, member talks and research presentations.

Register early and secure your 2024 stay with our group rate! Meeting registration is required to receive the booking ID, which will be required to book in our group block.

H.R. 4822 - Health Care Price Transparency Act of 2023 

The Ways and Means Committee approved the Health Care Price Transparency Act of 2023 (H.R. 4822) to bring more transparency to America’s health care system. Hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, imaging providers, and clinical labs will all now be required to publish the actual price for their services, giving patients confidence they are receiving the care they need at a price they can afford and giving providers an incentive to lower prices through competition. This legislation also includes key measures to lower the cost of medications for seniors and ensures those on Medicare Advantage receive timely access to medical services by reforming the prior authorization process.

Click here to view the bill.

H.R. 2474 - Strengthening Medicare for Patients and Providers Act 

This bill modifies certain adjustments to payment amounts under the Medicare physician fee schedule.

Payment amounts under the Medicare physician fee schedule are based on a service's relative value, a conversion factor, and a geographic adjustment factor. Current law provides for separate conversion factors for physicians that are qualifying participants in advanced alternative payment models (also known as qualifying APM participants) and for other physicians beginning in 2026, with an annual update of 0.75% and 0.25%, respectively.

The bill replaces the separate conversion factors for qualifying APM participants and other physicians with a single conversion factor and provides for an update that is equal to the annual percentage increase in the Medicare Economic Index, beginning in 2024. (The Medicare Economic Index is a specialized index that is generally used to determine allowed charges for physician services based on annual price changes.)

Click here to view the bill.

H.R. 5013 - Value in Health Care Act of 2023

Summary provided by the AMA:

This bill continues the 5% APM incentive payments for two years and freezes the 50% revenue threshold that physicians in value-based care models must meet to qualify for these bonuses over the same time frame. It also gives the Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary the authority to further increase the revenue threshold, but at a pace of no more than 5% in any single year.

“These proposed policies would grant HHS the needed flexibility to adjust the financial risk at a pace that enables more physicians to participate in APMs, while building on the tremendous movement toward value-based care,” said AMA President Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH.

Click here to view the bill.

Why Doctors Spend Millions on Fees That Could Be Spent on Providing Care

Content written by Cezary Podkul, ProPublica

Imagine if each time your wages were deposited in your bank account, your employer deducted a fee of 1.5% to 5% to provide the money electronically. That, increasingly, is what health insurers are imposing on doctors. Many insurers, after whittling down physicians’ reimbursements, now take an additional cut if the doctor prefers — as almost all do — to receive funds electronically rather than via a paper check.

Such fees have become routine in American health care in recent years, according to an investigation by ProPublica. Click here to continue reading.

Health Insurers Ignore Surprise Billing Decisions, Providers Allege

The survey of more than 48,000 physicians in 45 states found payers are delaying award payments and sometimes completely denying them, which AFHC said risks destabilizing the No Surprises Act passed by Congress that went into effect early 2022.

No Surprises aims to protect consumers from pricey medical bills resulting from disputes between providers and payers, particularly when patients unknowingly receive care from an out-of-network provider at in-network facility. To read the full article from Healthcare Dive, click here.

Rhysida: An Emerging Threat Group

Provided by The American Institute of Healthcare Compliance

Rhysida is an emerging threat group, targeting many critical infrastructure sectors including the Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) sector. It is a ransomware-as-a-service group which deceitfully describes itself as a “cybersecurity team” projecting themselves as helping victims highlight potential security issues and secure their networks. While not much is known about the group’s origins or country affiliations, Rhysida ransomware is deployed in multiple ways.

On August 3, 2023 Rhysida attacked a health care system which operates 16 hospitals and more than 165 clinics and outpatient centers in four states. According to reports, the attack resulted in "emergency departments to close, ambulances to be diverted, and other medical services to cease operations" in what appeared to be a ransomware attack.

The attack required the hospitals to take their systems offline to protect their patient data and to revert to using paper records. In some states, the health system’s blood draw stations and medical imaging locations were also impacted. Areas saw emergency departments, as well as some primary and specialty locations closed until further notice. As a result, impacted entities were contacting patients individually due to the various effects to patient care.

Read the 2-page August 16, 2023 Brief released by the HHS 405(d) Task Group which also recommends that your IT department implement the following best practices found in their FREE resources, such as the Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices (HICP) Technical Volumes 1&2 and Knowledge on Demand to protect your valuable health information from such threats.

Have a Book that was Meaningful to your Professional Journey? Please Share!

Please consider sharing a short paragraph about lessons learned from a book that has shaped you as a leader. Send your summary to Sarah Thompson.

Past Recommendations Include:

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
• Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life by Arthur C. Brooks
• The Powerful Purpose of Introverts: Why the World Needs YOU to be YOU by Holly Gerth
• Leading with Your Upper Brain: How to Create the Behaviors That Unlock Performance Excellence by Michael E. Frisina, PhD, and Robert W. Frisina, MA
• Give and Take by Adam Grant
• The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
• Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger and Multiply Your Impact by Liz Wiseman
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
• What Exceptional Leaders Know & Exceptional Leaders Playbook by Tracy Spears and Wally Schmader
• Dare to Lead by Brené Brown
• The Traveler’s Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success by Andy Andrews
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
• Multipliers by Liz Wiseman
• Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
• The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
• The Power of Moments by Chip & Dan Heath