A Few Tuesday Items CMS asks that you share this important information with all of your association members and State and local chapters. Thanks! Happy Tuesday everyone! I have a few items that I didn't want to hold until Friday, including information on:
MLN Learning Management System Now Available!
Availability of Valuable Resources In Preparation for a Potential Influenza Pandemic
Availability of an Interim Study of Alternative Payment Localities Under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule
Medicare Learning Network's (MLN) Learning Management System (LMS) is now available! The Medicare Learning Network's (MLN) Learning Management System (LMS) that hosts our web-based training courses and product ordering page is now available and has a new look. All of your certificates and product ordering history is still available and you can use your same user id and password. There is no need to register again. If you have any questions, please send them to MLN@cms.hhs.gov . To access the system go to http://www.cms.hhs.gov/MLNProducts and click on web-based training modules or MLN product ordering page at the bottom of the page. Thank you for your patience while we were upgrading the system.
Availability of Valuable Resources In Preparation for a Potential Influenza Pandemic
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) wants to alert providers to a valuable resource in the preparation for a potential influenza pandemic. "Community Pan-Flu Preparedness: A Checklist of Key Legal Issues for Healthcare Providers," is a scalable tool designed to assist providers along the continuum of care, as well as the broader healthcare and public health communities, in taking concrete steps to prepare for an influenza pandemic. The Checklist was informed by a public interest dialogue session convened by the American Health Lawyers Association, Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Participants from federal and state agencies, the provider and payor communities, academia, and other stakeholders discussed the role of the healthcare sector in community pan-flu preparedness. They also shared their best thinking regarding the challenges to pan-flu preparedness and practical solutions to such challenges. These ideas and recommendations were incorporated into the Checklist in order to make the resource as practical and relevant as possible. CMS encourages hospitals and other health care providers to review the Checklist as they consider the legal impediments and implementation challenges to community pan-flu preparedness and practical solutions to such challenges. This publication can be found at: http://www.healthlawyers.org/panfluchecklist
Also note that on October 22, 2008, AHLA also is sponsoring a teleconference entitled "The Sneeze Heard 'Round the World: Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Strategies to Adopt Now." The teleconference will focus on the considerations unique to preparedness planning for influenza pandemics, including protection of employees and maintaining operations, implementation of altered clinical pathways, and strategies for successful public health and provider coordination that need to be addressed at the present time to ensure an adequate level of preparedness. One of the country's leading experts, Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, and three experts in the emerging specialty of emergency preparedness law will discuss practical preparedness steps that healthcare entities, providers and payors can implement now. To learn more about the teleconference, go to http://www.healthlawyers.org/pi/teleconference Availability of an Interim Study of Alternative Payment Localities Under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Medicare is statutorily required to adjust payments for physician fee schedule services to account for differences in costs due to geographic location. There are currently 89 different localities which have not been revised since 1997. In the CY 2009 Physician Fee Schedule notice of proposed rulemaking which was released on June 30, 2008, we indicated that we would post on the CMS website a preliminary study of several options for revising the payment localities. The report entitled: "Review of Alternative GPCI Payment Locality Structures", which was produced by Acumen, LLC under contract to CMS, may currently be found at the following link:
http://www.cms.hhs.gov/PhysicianFeeSched/downloads/ReviewOfAltGPCIs.pdf . Our study of possible alternative payment locality configurations is in the early stages of development. At this time we are not proposing to make any changes to the payment localities. We encourage interested parties to submit comments on the options presented in the report as well as suggestions for other options. These comments will be considered in the development of possible future notice and comment rulemaking. When we are ready to propose any changes to the locality configuration, we will provide extensive opportunities for public comment (for example, a town hall meeting or open door forum) on specific proposals before implementing any change. Electronic comments on the interim report may be submitted to MPFS@cms.hhs.gov until November 3, 2008. (Note: Address for sending comments has been corrected, and comment period extended).
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