MMA News
Legislative Session Gets Underway
With lawmakers returning to the Capitol March 1, the MMA is refocusing on its top three legislative priorities: passing a statewide ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, winning reimbursement for interpreter services, and rolling back prior-approval requirements for C-sections and circumcisions that were enacted last year.
This year, lawmakers are expected to try to finish the session quickly so they can get home and campaign. All seats will be up for election in November. One thing that may help them get their work done is that they won’t have to pass a budget. They passed a two-year budget in 2005.
However, they will have plenty of health care issues to debate beneath the Capitol dome. Physicians have a perfect chance to make their voices heard on March 16, when the MMA holds its largest grassroots advocacy event of the year.
Previously named Day at the Capitol, the MMA/ MMAA Physician Legislative Advocacy Summit offers physicians training in advocacy tactics as well as a chance to meet with lawmakers. Now, as an added bonus, for the first time physicians can earn continuing medical education credit by attending this event.
The MMA designates this event an educational activity. Participants can earn a maximum of 2.5 category 1 credits toward the AMA Physician’s Recognition Award. Each physician should claim credit only for the time that he or she actually spent in the activity.
The MMA is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
Visit www.MMAonline.net to register. To register by phone or e-mail, contact Vicki Westling
at 612/362-3764 or vwestling@mnmed.org.
Translating Care on the Farm and in the City
It may come as a surprise that clinics with some of the greatest needs for interpreter services aren’t in the Twin Cities but are in towns such as Worthington, Willmar, and Fairmont.
As Minnesota’s non-English-speaking population has grown, more and more physicians practicing in urban and rural areas are caught in the bind of having to provide interpreter services without being paid for them.
The federal government requires physicians to offer interpreter services as part of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Payers evade picking up the tab by telling doctors it’s just a cost of doing business they have to bear.
In response to this unsustainable situation, the MMA has made getting insurers to pay for these services a top priority this year. The MMA will join with the Minnesota Medical Group Management Association (MMGMA) to work at the Capitol to pass legislation.
Currently, clinics often lose money treating non-English speakers who need an interpreter. An interpreter service typically charges about $50 an hour with a two-hour minimum, whereas total reimbursement for a routine visit is about $60, says Phil Riveness, associate administrator for Noran Neurological Clinic in Minneapolis and a legislative consultant for the MMGMA, which represents clinic managers.
Minnesota’s public programs do reimburse for interpreter services but at a maximum rate of $25. Riveness’s own group of clinics, provided about $120,000 worth of unreimbursed interpreter services last year, he says.
“Clinics are really between a rock and a hard place because you are required to have qualified interpreters, but the law is silent on who is supposed to pay for it,” he says.
Some of the hardest-hit clinics are in rural areas such as Watonwan County, where 15.9 percent of the population is non-English speaking, Riveness says.
“The impression of legislators in the past was that this was an urban problem, but that is not it at all,” he says. “The impact is really being felt in these small communities because the choices for people may be only one or two clinics.”
Former MMA President Runs for AMA Council
Blanton Bessinger, M.D., M.B.A., is running for a spot on the American Medical Association Council on Constitution and Bylaws.
The seven-member council considers matters relating to the administration and governance of the AMA. The election will be held at the AMA’s annual meeting in June.
Bessinger has a distinguished history of leadership in organized medicine. He served as president of the MMA in 2000. He currently serves as an alternate AMA delegate for the MMA. As chair of the MMA’s Governance Task Force, he guided efforts to improve the MMA’s leadership structure, resulting in changes that will take effect later this year.
“A good governance structure is a fair set of rules that result in consensus positions while also allowing input from all sides,” says Bessinger. “You mention process to most physicians, and their eyes glaze over. But I’m a process person because I think that good processes result in the best decisions.”