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.
- 30 -
News for
the week of
April 24
– April 29
