Volume XII, No. 1 February 2011 NEWSLETTER Open Access at www.westjem.org California Chapter of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE INSIDE: President’s Message (continued) B Potts Health Policy A Lieser EM in Malaysia S Lee n the fall, A.B. 1503 was passed and signed by the governor. This bill limits the amount that can be billed to self-insured and low income patients. This law took effect January 1, 2011. Despite the fact that emergency physicians already provide a significant amount of unreimbursed/under-reimbursed care, this new law requires emergency physicians to provide discounts to uninsured patients and patients with high medical costs. Although I understand the premise and reasoning behind those that support the bill, it is frustrating that our legislature and government entities in Sacramento continued to feel obliged to pass further laws dictating how much emergency physicians can charge for their services. Some groups’ reimbursement could be more affected than others. This continues a significant trend over the last few years that further threatens and undermines the health care safety net, emergency services and on-call panel availability, and emergency department physician reimbursement. Hopefully this trend will cease, but with significant federal and state budgetary challenges, both Medi-Cal and Medicare reimbursement have the potential for an ominous future. In December, the CAL/AAEM chapter hosted its first Speakers Series event in San Diego. This event was coordinated by CAL/ AAEM board member Keith Yablonicky. This event enabled many chapter members, local attendings, and residents to enjoy an evening of social networking and educational lectures given by Dr. John Love, Dr. Stuart Swadron, and Dr. Mel Herbert. The board was I February 2011 very pleased by the turnout and success of the event, and I am looking forward to working with board members in Northern California to develop a similar event for our Northern California members. The goals of the lecture series are to promote networking amongst our membership, provide an educational CME opportunity, and foster a connection to the chapter and promote fellowship with local physicians and residents. If any chapter member would like to work with us to help coordinate and plan the Northern California event, please contact our board at calaaem@ aaem.org. The 2011 AAEM Scientific Assembly will be in Orlando in February. Orlando is quite a trek for our California members, but we hope for an excellent registration turnout for the Assembly. Last year’s chapter social in Las Vegas was extremely successful and had a large turnout of California members who came to the Assembly. During the last month, we have made significant additions and changes to our chapter website, www.calaaem.org. I encourage our members to check out the new version of the site. Some of these changes were in response to feedback from our membership survey last fall. We added links to continued on page 2.
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