by Kirsten A. Brown

Today, April 27, is D.O. Day on Capitol Hill and, say representatives of the American Osteopathic Association (AOA), “response from members of the osteopathic community in support of this event has been tremendous. The AOA looks forward to an exciting and informative day with members of Congress.”

“It’s so important for members of the osteopathic community to be here for our D.O. Day on Capitol Hill. It demonstrates the community is dedicated to protecting and preserving the cornerstones of osteopathic medicine,” says Marcelino Oliva, D.O., chairman of AOA’s Council on Federal Health Programs.

David A. Bitonte, D.O., M.B.A., president of the Ohio Osteopathic Association (OOA), will be among the prominent voices of osteopathic profession when they meet with the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C., for D.O. Day. Bitonte and other representatives of the osteopathic profession will take this opportunity to discuss with the legislature the public policy that affects the profession. Bitonte will be joined on Capitol Hill by OOA Executive Director Jon F. Wills and roughly 40 other Ohio D.O.s and medical students, as well as by more than 1,000 fellow osteopathic doctors from across the country.

Among the medical students will be a contingent of OU-COMers, which includes Cecilia Hansen, Adrienne Fehr, Ekokobe Fonkem, Christina Peters, Erin Herrick, Myro Lu, Danielle Miller, Azam Shah, Christina Gonzalez, Nicholas Pfleghaar, Andrea Funk, Julianne Moy, Mathew Rose, Brian Cady, Kimberly Jackson, Nicole Veitinger, Michael O’Neil, Nicholas Carr, Lindsey Barrick, Rebecca Teagarden, Lucy Bucher, Jameelah Harris, Katherine Ritchey, Alex Tsai, Stephen Bacak, Tiffany Brown and Timothy Neely.

The Ohio group will convene with the state’s two senators and then divide into smaller groups to meet with each of Ohio’s 18 congressional representatives.

“D.O. Day on Capitol Hill provides our students the opportunity to be osteopathic advocates by meeting with members of Congress to discuss issues important to the profession,” Bitonte says. “D.O.s and osteopathic medical students are able to provide expertise to those who develop public policy impacting the health care of all Americans.”

Bitonte says that representatives will concentrate their efforts on four specific concerns: residency training in non-hospital Settings, correction of the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula for Medicare physician payments, fulfilling meaningful medical liability reforms and higher education student loan interest deduction.

In pushing for the “Community and Rural Medical Residency Preservation Act of 2005,” Bitonte says that they will ask members of Congress to cosponsor the important bill, which seeks to guarantee that regulations will not further impede teaching programs from training resident physicians in ambulatory and rural settings.

The osteopathic community will assert its support of the “Preserving Patient Access to Physicians Act” and the “Medicare Value-Based Purchasing for Physicians’ Services Act” proposals, which eliminate the use the flawed and inequitable SGR equation from the Medicare physician payment formula. In turn, the proposals suggest SGR be replaced with a payment formula that more precisely reimburses physicians for their services, more accurately reflects the costs of providing care and allows for annual adjustment based upon inflation rates.

“According to statistics, physicians will see their reimbursements reduced by four to five percent per year through 2012, potentially resulting in cuts of 20 percent or more over the next six years,” Bitonte says. “That could lead to decreased participation by physicians in the Medicare program, thus posing a serious long-term threat to patient access to care.”

The AOA coordinated the schedule for D.O. Day on Capitol Hill, which will also consist of a conference with guest speakers and conclude with a debriefing reception.