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Welcome to the CCACC Member Area!
This password secured area is meant to help our members exchange information among our membership that will not be generally available to the lay public and non-members. Members can go to our secure Blog that will have current information and discussion, get some important information about CCACC initiatives and read about the latest member news.
May 26th 2011 Update
This year our annual meeting was at a new venue; St. Clement’s Castle, in Portland Connecticut. Dr. Neal Lippman, the outgoing President, reviewed the CCACC’s accomplishments over the past year and then ceremoniously handed over the gavel to Dr. Gil Lancaster, proclaiming him the new President of the Chapter. Dr. Lancaster presented the results of the ACC survey of cardiologists nationally and in Connecticut showing how members are responding to the changing healthcare environment. The meeting culminated with the keynote speaker, Dr. Jack Lewin, the CEO of the ACC. Dr. Lewin discussed the changing healthcare environment and gave an optimistic yet cautious assessment of the future. He stressed that much of what might develop in the future depends on how the medical community postures itself both in its practices and politically. He pointed out that the ACC is the 2nd most influential medical society after the AMA- and stressed the need to support the PAC.
March 23rd 2011 Update
Today we are publishing an 'open letter' to House Speaker Chris Donovan, members of the Connecticut General Assembly, Governor Dannel Malloy and the SustiNet Board, withdrawing our prior support for the SustiNet Health Partnership plan.
SustiNet, as you may know, is a “Public Option-like” plan that was developed based on the practice guidelines that the ACC has pioneered and now is encouraging us to integrate into our practices. When we originally supported the plan it had a provision that stated that doctors who followed the guidelines would be protected from litigation.
Unfortunately, a month after we offered our support, the protection from litigation was stripped by the legislature’s Public Health Committee <http://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/menu/MemberList.asp?comm_code=PH> . In the testimony when the bill was introduced, the CT Trial Lawyers Association said the provision “would put patients who receive care through the SustiNet plan at a distinct disadvantage, as the doors of the courts would be closed to them, even if they were seriously harmed by a health care provider, because the harm caused was in compliance with clinical care guidelines.” This is a serious misstatement of what the provision says or implies.
The letter we are publishing is attached and will appear in the Hartford Courant, the New Haven Register, the Stamford Advocate and the Danbury News Times. Although we have already gotten some early support from the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut <http://www.universalhealthct.org/news-announcements.php?articleID=185> , we are anticipating some push-back from the CT Trial Lawyers Association and possibly some other lawyer groups.
The CCACC believes that this is not just a fight for medical liability reform, but also for quality medical care for our patients and a prominent place at the table when legislation is crafted that will affect those patients and their doctors.
We would encourage our members to ‘go public’ about why we need this provision back in SustiNet. Please consider writing a letter to the editor in your local newspaper- we will be willing to give you some important points to cover in it, if you need them. We need all the back-up we can get!
Below are some of the notes we have received from members. Please feel free to send me your thoughts and reactions at gilead.lancaster@ccacc.org and let me know if you want me to post it here.
Dear Gil, Neal,
The Sustinet Bill is indeed having trouble with the legislative sausage making process, which seems determined to remove the meat from the sausage. But to withdraw support actually removes us from the table! We know that the current nonsystem serves neither doctors nor patients well, dominated as it is by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. We also know that it is not sustainable! And will only get more expensive, cover less, and grow more bureaucratic and inflexible with time.
I propose that publically and privately, the ACC make it clear that we are still involved in the process.
It seems unwise to write off any other option until all avenues have been explored to make the Bill as good as possible as it moves further through the legislature.
Steve (Wolfson)
(Our response):
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your input. You are absolutely right about what this might mean, and we thought long and hard about this action. We felt, however, that this is an issue that was worth fighting for- especially for cardiologists. The way that the liability coverage provision was stripped from the bill, is quite upsetting and made us feel that this was an indication that we would not get any seat in drafting the important provisions of SustiNet. As we made clear in the letter, we would be happy to restore our support if they reinstate this provision.
So far we have gotten more interest from the media than we expected, and for the most part it has been positive (see the Courant article from yesterday <http://www.courant.com/health/connecticut/hc-buck-cardiologists-opposed-to-sust20110322,0,5928059.column> ). We are also working with our lobbyists in Hartford to talk with some of the key people there, and tell them that we still want to be involved- but as serious participants rather than the usual rubber stamp.
Gil
Regardless of how this turns out, I think the ACC should grab a few plaintiff attorneys and create a generic blueprint on how physicians can build a bulletproof defense based on guidelines and documentation that they are following their local clinical pathways….and reading the nurses notes, which is the first place I looked for data when I did legal work.
Best,
James Revkin
Thanks for all your efforts Gil. With regard to the current situation, our posture of not supporting Sustinet unless there is a malpractice reform provision could be construed as unfairly denying access to that population to legal redress that is available to all others who have alternative insurance coverage. I think we will have a hard time countering that arguement although we all know that the lawyer in the exam room drives medical costs up significantly, well more than the single digit number glibly referred to by the trial lawyers.We all know that this number is closer to 20 % ( personal estimate).
I will support our efforts and send emails and call to the committee members.
This creates an opportunity to partner with other specialty organizations and CSMS to introduce maplractice reform legislation to this committee and to the legislature as a unified voice of the medical community.
Jaime Gerber
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