SFMS physician members: Help expand your patient base and promote your practice with your customizable physician member page on the SFMS website. SFMS makes more than 6,000 referrals each year with our Physician Finder tool.

Highlight your practice by updating your profile today.

Other new website features include:

• Advocacy Section with regional, state, and national updates on priority bills and key wins.
• Online event registration and membership renewal.
• On-demand member-only resources available for immediate download (e.g., 5010 update, new California law update for physicians, etc.).

SB 1318 (Wolk), which would require all health care workers in health care facilities, including physicians, to either receive the influenza vaccination or wear a mask in patient care areas during flu season, passed the state Senate today by a vote of 23 to 9.

The bill is co-sponsored by SFMS/CMA.

In California, several counties (Sacramento, Yolo, and San Francisco) and numerous hospitals have gone beyond state law and have already instituted mandatory vaccination policies that include a masking requirement for the unvaccinated. The California hospitals with the highest vaccine compliance rate are those that have such policies in place.

“SB 1318 has passed out of two policy committees and now, through a full Senate vote with bipartisan support,” says CMA President James Hay, MD. “We know that higher vaccination levels among staff have been associated with a lower risk of hospital-acquired influenza cases. SB 1318 will help to keep the numbers of hospital-acquired flu fatalities low. CMA applauds the California Senate for seeing this bill through.”

The bill now heads to the Assembly.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Regional Offices are hosting a series of webinar on Version 5010 for health care providers, clearinghouses, vendors and others.

Version 5010 refers to the standards that HIPAA-covered entities must use when electronically conducting certain health care administrative transactions, such as claims, remittance, eligibility, and claims status requests and responses.

Health care organizations that submit transactions electronically are required to upgrade from Version 4010/4010A to Version 5010 transaction standards. To be compliant, organizations must use Version 5010 to send and receive claims and all other HIPAA-adopted electronic transactions starting January 1, 2012; however, CMS has implemented an enforcement discretionary period, which is in effect through June 30, 2012. 

Sign up for a free webinar hosted by CMS to learn more about:

• Current Conversion Statistics
• Final Preparations for 5010/D.0 Cutover
• Operational Concerns
• Future of EDI Communications
• Resources and Contact Information

The next webinar is scheduled for Wednesday, June 20, 2012, from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm PST.

Click here to register.

SFMS board member John Maa, MD was named president-elect of the Northern California Chapter of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) on May 12, 2012.

Dr. Maa is an Assistant Professor of Surgery and Associate Director of the Surgery Clerkship for the UCSF. He earned his medical degree at Harvard Medical School, completed residency training at UCSF, and served as a captain in the medical corps of the U.S. Army for nine years.

Dr. Maa also completed a Fellowship in Health Policy at the UCSF Institute of Health Policy Studies, exploring mechanisms to improve the delivery of general surgical care nationally. He developed the UCSF Surgical Hospitalist Program to enhance the quality and timeliness of hospital based emergency surgical care. This model was implemented at UCSF Medical Center in 2005 to improve the timeliness and quality of emergency surgical care.

Dr. Maa is dedicated to improving the quality and access of emergency surgical care, and hope to continue to work towards this goal in his new leadership role with the ACS and SFMS.

The deadline to apply for a Medicare e-prescribing exemption for 2013 is June 30, 2012. If you have not electronically prescribed 10 times with a qualifying physician fee schedule service, you only have a few more weeks to do so. The 2013 payment reduction penalty of 1.5 percent will be determined by e-prescribing activity between January 1 and June 30, 2012.

To avoid the penalty in 2013, eligible professionals must report e-prescribing activity using measure code G8553 for at least 10 eligible fee schedule services via claims submission, or request an exemption through the online web-portal. Exemption requests from individual physicians will not be accepted via mail, email or fax.

The significant hardship categories are as follows:

• The eligible professional is unable to electronically prescribe due to local, state, or federal law, or regulation

• The eligible professional has or will prescribe fewer than 100 prescriptions during a 6-month reporting period ( January 1 through June 30, 2012)

• The eligible professional practices in a rural area without sufficient high-speed Internet access (G8642)

• The eligible professional practices in an area without sufficient available pharmacies for electronic prescribing (G8643)