Coming together as a specialty
From the President
Dr. Olbricht served as Academy president from March 2018 to March 2019.
By Suzanne Olbricht, MD, May 1, 2018
Since taking the reins as your Academy President, I have spoken with many members about their day-to-day experiences in practice, the challenges they face, and their hopes for the future. It’s no surprise to any of us that we are a vastly diverse specialty. We work in a number of practice settings, we focus on different diseases, and we work in various dermatologic sub-specialties. Our daily operations may be different, but one thing I have noticed in my conversations with so many of you is that we all possess one common thread: we all want what’s best for our patients.
That is why I believe it is so important for our specialty to be united, especially when it comes to facing the changes and challenges we’re experiencing on a daily basis as physicians. I think we can look to several examples in recent history where our specialty has successfully come together. In February, Congress passed and President Trump signed a bill that repealed the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) which could have created the potential for indiscriminate new payment cuts on physicians. The legislation also stopped efforts to extend a misvalued codes policy, which would have required CMS to cut the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule by 0.5% by correcting “misvalued” codes or by creating across-the-board cuts. Both of these issues were top AADA legislative priorities. Hundreds of us responded to grassroots calls to action and many of us went to Washington, D.C. to lobby our members of Congress at the annual AADA Legislative Conference. Our collective voice and efforts made a difference. It wasn’t luck.
Additionally, as a result of the AADA’s leadership and persistence in the development of a strategic multi-faceted advocacy campaign, Anthem, Inc. rescinded its proposed policy to reduce reimbursement by 25% for E/M services billed with a modifier 25. Anthem’s initial proposal had been a 50% cut, which it reduced and delayed three months in response to AADA advocacy. Academy members and staff acted in close collaboration with the AMA, state medical and dermatology societies, and other medical specialty societies, and worked directly with Anthem to encourage them to rescind the policy. Again, this win for our specialty was not luck.
These are just two examples that prove that we are capable of moving mountains when we work together. Your Academy is 20,000+ members strong and I encourage everyone to take the time to talk to one another and have discussions related to where we are, what is in the future for us, and how we can control what we can control and adapt to what we cannot control. In particular, we must engage with our international members as they may be dealing with some of the same issues we’re facing in health care in the United States, and we may be able to learn from each other’s experiences. Additionally, I saw so many informative presentations from dermatologists from all corners of the world at our recent Annual Meeting in San Diego — proof that when we get together as a specialty and talk shop, it’s amazing what innovative ideas come to the surface.
I think we can all agree that our effort is very effective and productive when we put it into advocating on behalf of our patients and working with each other to come up with clinical and practice solutions. I am eager to see what more we can get done as a unified specialty in the future. Thank you all for your tireless work.
