Giving Thanks for Beneficial Regs and Our Holiday Wish List

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! This week, please enjoy some regs with turkey legs!

As today is the day of giving thanks, I wanted to let you know about a federal policy for which ACEP is extremely thankful. Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a final reg to allow critical access hospitals to receive graduate medical education (GME) payments for the residents they train. ACEP has been fighting for decades to change this policy and finally provide rural hospitals the funding they need to support emergency medicine resident rotations.

The more we can encourage emergency medicine rotations in rural areas, the more we can improve access to high-quality emergency care for patients who live in these communities.

Policies such as this make me hopeful that CMS and other federal agencies will do more in the future to advance emergency care. One of my biggest wishes for the upcoming holiday season is that CMS will demonstrate that it values emergency medicine by not going forward with its plan to reduce Medicare reimbursement for your services in 2021 and by finally implementing our alternative payment model (APM), the Acute Unscheduled Care Model, so that you all have an opportunity to receive the 5 percent Medicare payment bonus available under the Quality Payment Program. What a great holiday gift that would be!

Until next week, this is Jeffrey saying, enjoy reading regs with your eggs (or turkey legs)!