Congress likely to renew advisory opinion program
Congress likely to renew advisory opinion program
Health care providers wondering what Congress may have in store for them in the waning days of the 105th Congress have little to fear. In all likelihood, legislators will renew the advisory opinion statute and possibly expand the rights providers have to review decision by the Health Care Financing Administration.
Also possible, but less likely, is legislation that would rein in the Stark II self-referral laws, according to several senior congressional staffers. Most of those questions will be answered later this week when the House Ways and Means Committee is expected to pass a Balanced Budget Refinement Act (BBRA).
All sides agree the most likely item is a reauthorization of the advisory opinion process, which expired last month. Providers also can expect to see certain Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) protections not included in the current statute added to the process. Those protections would be designed to protect providers from FOIA requests made by trial lawyers who later use the information disclosed in qui tam filings against them.
The self-referral bill introduced last year by House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-CA) may also surface, says a Ways & Means staffer. "The thought was to include it in BBRA, but that may poison the soup," he explains.
Meanwhile, House Committee on Commerce Chairman Tom Bliley (R-VA) last week introduced legislation that would make information included in the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) available to the general public. The NPDB, which contains disciplinary and medical malpractice payment information of physicians and other health care providers, is currently available only to state licensing boards, hospitals, and certain HMOs.
Currently, the Patient Protection Act, would give the public access to disciplinary information about adverse actions taken against physicians and hospitals, as well as medical malpractice payment information and the ability to compare physicians within a particular specialty or a given state.
Bliley argues this would strike a balance between the rights of patients and physicians.
The Chicago-based American Medical Association (AMA) says otherwise. "We look at this as retribution for our work on the Patient’s Bill of Rights," says Thomas Reardon, the AMA’s immediate past president. 0The AMA supports the original concept of the data bank as a repository for disciplinary actions regarding physicians including those who have lost their license. But he says the AMA opposes the inclusion of malpractice settlements. "The fact that a physician is sued has nothing to do with competency."
Instead, Reardon says the AMA supports what is unfolding at the state level, where state medical societies are working with state medical boards to develop Web sites that include disciplinary action but not malpractice information. In fact, 28 states already have such Web sites.
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