ASA continues to engage lawmakers and rulemakers on a number of legislative and regulatory issues affecting anesthesiologists’ work, quality and patient safety. With a new administration in the White House and a physician leading the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), ASA recently took advantage of an opportunity to bring to the administration’s attention regulations that members have consistently felt were burdensome, repetitive or outdated.
Earlier this year, HHS Secretary Tom Price, M.D., and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma, M.P.H., invited ASA to identify and discuss “the impact of government on the doctor-patient relationship and remove barriers that unnecessarily interfere with meaningful interaction between health care providers and their patients.”
As physician anesthesiologists are well aware, regulation, accreditation policies and payment policies affect practices and patients in different ways. Throughout the year, in discussions among colleagues and in questions submitted to various ASA...
