w00t! National Physicians Alliance October 19 & 20 in DC

2013 National Conference  FiDA highlight

MARK YOUR CALENDARS for the NPA 8th Annual Conference, Washington DC — OCT 19 & 20, 2013

“Leading the Way:  Courage & Innovation in Patient-Centered Reform”

Plan to join NPA Members and friends from across the country in Washington DC to share energy, inspiration, and knowledge!

Keynote Address
Courage from the House of Medicine

Otis Webb Brawley, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of the American Cancer Society

National Grand Rounds
Challenging the Selling of Sickness:
A partnership model for a new social health movement

Leonore Tiefer, PhD, clinical psychologist and author of Sex is Not a Natural Act (Boulder: Westview Press, 2nd edition, 2004)

and Kim Witczak, marketing consultant and patient advocate who became involved in pharmaceutical drug safety issues after the 2003 death of her husband as a result of an undisclosed drug side effect.  In 2008 she was appointed to the FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee as a Patient Representative.

2 special training sessions
with one of DC’s premier media teams:
KNP Communications

The Art of Persuasion

This core training has been provided to hundreds of Senators, Congressional Representatives, CEOs, and leaders of nonprofit and government organizations.
This session covers:

• strategies for connecting with various audiences
• an interactive overview of nonverbal cues
• the uses of story
• techniques for compelling Q+A sessions

Effective Messaging for Preventing Gun Violence

This training will cover messaging guidance on gun violence prevention that has helped to frame the public debate on this issue since the Newtown tragedy.  Key themes include:

• the personal toll of gun violence
• the right to be free from violence in our daily lives
• the changing nature of military-style weapons
• and effective responses to common attacks on issues such as the 2nd Amendment

Additional sessions will include:

• Quality, Affordable, High Value Care Systems
• Policy Making in Federal Agencies
• Choosing Wisely:  Making It Happen
• Skill building sessions:  How to do a radio interview and a Hill visit
• Innovators’ Forum – a place to share your ideas
• And more… Reserve your seat today!

–>REGISTER HERE!<–

Plan to join us in Washington DC, October 19-21, 2013

Stay over Monday, Oct 21, to join NPA members on Capitol Hill
and meet with your congressional representatives.

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Conference Location

20 F Street NW Conference Center

A Facility Owned and Managed by the American College of Surgeons
20 F Street, NW (near Union Station), Washington, DC,  20001
Directions -  Area Map

Hotel & Travel

NPA has reserved a limited number of hotel rooms at a special conference rate of $169/night plus tax at the Washington Court Hotel, 525 New Jersey Avenue NW, Washington DC 20001 (near Union Station)

Reservations must be made directly with  the hotel at
(202) 628.2100 or (800) 321.3010
*Be sure to specify that you are reserving as part of the National Physicians Alliance group.

Deadline for reservations at the conference rate is
Friday, September 20.

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Submit a Poster!

Are you doing exciting new research, implementing quality improvement, building a local network, or advocating for an important issue in your state or nationally?  Your NPA colleagues want to learn about it!  Submit your work to our 2nd annual poster presentation at the NPA 8th Annual Meeting, October 19-20, 2013 in Washington DC.  Click here for details.

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Contact Becky Martin, NPA Project Manager, if you have questions or need additional assistance, becky.martin@npalliance.net or call 202/420-7896

National Physicians Alliance: 'Un-Branded' Doctors

http://npalliance.org/press/press-releases/modest-means-modest/

Health Care For All, MASSPIRG, AARP Massachusetts, National PhysiciansAlliance, American Medical Student Association And Community Catalyst Urge DPHTo Protect Patients, Amend Drug Marketing Regulations And Conform To Law

Press Release: October 19, 2012

Leading consumer, health care, senior and community advocates voiced strong opposition to emergency regulations weakening the state’s prescription and medical device marketing law at today’s Department of Public Health hearing.

The regulations implement a law passed last summer to relax state restrictions on meals provided by pharmaceutical and medical device companies to doctors and other prescribers. Under the previous law, meals may not be provided unless in a clinical setting. The amended statute permits “modest meals and refreshments” to be offered at educational programs outside of a health care setting, such as a restaurant.

Representatives of numerous advocacy groups testified in favor of improving the emergency regulations. The rules ignored the legislative direction to limit permitted meals to those considered modest, and instead defined “modest” as “similar to what a health care practitioner might purchase when dining at his or her own expense.”

“We urge the Department to comply with the directive given in the amended statute and define ‘modest meals and refreshments’ in clear, concrete and enforceable terms. Alcohol should be expressly prohibited, as alcohol is contraindicated for educating doctors about drugs and treatments that affect their patients’ health,” said Amy Whitcomb Slemmer, Executive Director of Health Care For All. “If the proposed regulations are not significantly strengthened, we will inevitably go back to the days of pharmaceutical and device sales representatives inappropriately wining and dining our doctors.”

“The bottom line is that drug companies wine and dine doctors and other prescribers to sell their newest, most profitable brand name drugs, not to provide unbiased academic information on medical care,” testified Deirdre Cummings, MASSPIRG’s legislative director. “While the whole practice ought to be eliminated, at the very least, the regulations should accurately reflect the law. Free meals provided by the drug industry to physicians must truly be modest, and in an environment conducive to learning.”

“We urge DPH to establish a concrete monetary limit to define the term ‘modest,’ and we felt strongly that these meals should exclude alcohol. Instead, the proposed regulations have no monetary restriction, and permit the provision of alcohol,” Cummings added

“The medical profession prides itself on putting patients first. By not setting a clear dollar limit in its definition of ‘modest meals and refreshments,’ the Department of Public Health compromises our profession’s integrity,” said David Tian, a fourth-year Harvard Medical School student and national chair of the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) PharmFree campaign. “Patients deserve to know that their doctors’ prescribing choices are determined by the best scientific evidence, not which company promised the fanciest meal to lure prescribers into a one-sided presentation.”

As a result of the new regulations, drug companies are currently free to ply doctors with lavish multi-course meals and drinks, paid for by pharmaceutical industry marketing budgets, and ultimately tacked on to the price of prescriptions.

“AARP believes relationships between drug companies and doctors should be transparent and free from conflicts of interest,” said Jessica Costantino, advocacy director of AARP Massachusetts, which serves more than 800,000 members age 50 and older in the commonwealth. “The decision by the Public Health Council to approve regulations that further weaken the state’s Prescription Drug Gift Ban Law, ultimately puts the best interest of patients at risk.”

“Massachusetts is in danger of plummeting below its former place as a national leader in protecting patients from pharma marketing practices that interfere with trust between patients and their health care providers. The regulations also ignore the intent of the legislature by scrapping required disclosures to the state of industry payments to nurse practitioners and physicians assistants, which will not be required under the new federal transparency law that covers physicians.” says Marcia Hams, Director of Prescription Access and Quality at Community Catalyst. “These prescribers are increasingly the target of industry marketing now that they are critical to meeting primary care needs in the state.”

“I just want the best for my patients, and protecting the patient-physician relationship should be the focus of industry-oriented legislation, which the current gift ban regulations fail to do”, said Dr. Constance Liu, OB/Gyn department at Boston Medical Center and Boston leader of the National Physicians Alliance.

Following the hearing, the Department of Public Health plans to review testimony and issue permanent rules in November.

http://npalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/NPA_2012_Current_Program1.pdf

agenda November 11, 2012

NPA Annual Conference 

National Physicians Alliance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

National Physicians Alliance
Motto	Service, Integrity and Advocacy
Formation	2005
Type	501c(3)
Headquarters	Washington DC
Location	United States
Membership	20,000 physicians
President	Valerie Arkoosh, MD, MPH
Key people	Jean Silver-Isenstadt, MD, PhD
Website	npalliance.org

The National Physicians Alliance (NPA) is a national, multi-specialty medical organization founded in 2005 by former leaders of the American Medical Student Association. The organization's mission statement reads: "The National Physicians Alliance creates research and education programs that promote active engagement of physicians with their communities to achieve high quality, affordable health care for all. The NPA offers a professional home to physicians across medical specialties who share a commitment to professional integrity and health justice."

The NPA was founded as an alternative to traditional trade associations that operate in a guild tradition, primarily serving the economic interests of physicians rather than advocating first and foremost on behalf of patients and public health. The NPA does not accept funding from pharmaceutical or medical device companies.

A 501c(3) organization based in Washington DC, the NPA has a membership of approximately 20,000 physicians. Members must have graduated with an MD or DO degree from a professional school accredited by the LCME or the AOA-COCA; or hold a license to practice medicine within the United States.

Health Leaders Media encourages patient harm dialogue

New Facebook Page Gathers Stories of Medical Harm

Cheryl Clark, for HealthLeaders Media , May 24, 2012  (FiDA Blog Bold)

As if Facebook didn't grab enough headlines on Wall Street this week, the social media forum is also making healthcare news that should prompt any leader to pay close attention.

ProPublica, the two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning newsroom that collaborates with other media outlets for investigative journalism, a few days ago launched its Facebook "Patient Harm Community."

People can sign up and post a healthcare horror story in graphic detail. Journalists are joining to find patients in their communities who have details to share. There's a special "Files" page entitled "What to do if you've been harmed," which instructs patients on where and how to lodge complaints about doctors, nurses, and hospitals. Even some healthcare providers are weighing in.

ProPublica's Marshall Allen, who uncovered systemic poor quality in Nevada hospitals for a 2010 series in the Las Vegas Sun called Do No Harm, and himself a Pulitzer finalist, explains what prompted the Facebook venture.

For starters, he says, the one million people—a staggering number—who suffer injuries, infections, and errors in healthcare facilities across the country each year had very few places to turn for advice, until now.

"Over the years, I've talked to scores of patients who have been harmed while undergoing medical care, and the one thing that always struck me is the fact they feel so alone," he says.

"When they suffer this type of harm, they complain to doctors and hospital officials and regulators, but they often don't feel that they're being listened to. 

"I wanted to find a way to give these folks an opportunity to talk to one another, offer advice, encouragement, and comfort, and get questions answered. A lot of them are at different stages of the process of working through the things that happened to them."

Healthcare professionals especially should pay attention to what's said on this site, he says, because it might illuminate what a patient with a bad episode of care really goes through. They should join in the conversation.

"I think for hospital leaders this would be a great place for them to put an ear to the ground, to hear what patients are really saying, and factor that in when they make decisions," Allen says. "We created this for doctors, nurses, hospitals, and healthcare officials just as much as it was created for patients."

"Doctors, nurses, and hospital officials also are very interested in reducing the number of patients who suffer infections, injuries, and errors while undergoing medical care," he adds.

Leah Binder, CEO of the Leapfrog Group, which plans to publish patient safety scores for 2,600 hospitals on its website in a few weeks, says ProPublica's patient safety community "is a great idea ... so people who suffer this kind of harm don't think they're the only ones."

"All too often I will hear from someone, 'I had the most unusual experience; I got an infection in a hospital' or 'someone gave the wrong medication.' But that's not unusual; that's usual," Binder says. "Most people who have been in a hospital have suffered some kind of harm and it's time to put a stop to that. People deserve to know that some hospitals are safer than others."

She notes that the Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services counted up the number of deaths to Medicare beneficiaries caused by medical mistakes for one month. The extrapolated one-year total was 180,000. That makes for a lot of bereaved and frustrated family members.

By my count, membership in the fledgling Patient Harm Community is growing by about 100 a day as word gets out.

In recent days, for example, postings included these issues:

• A nurse in Phoenix claimed she was fired by her hospital, and now faces nursing board charges, for informing a patient about risks of upcoming surgery and the benefits of hospice.
• An infection prevention nurse in California, formerly a hospital inspector with the state Department of Public Health, told of undergoing a spinal disc procedure with a flawed protein material she was never informed about by her surgeon, resulting in multiple subsequent surgeries.
• A warning from an employee at the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for patients to not take antibiotics and proton pump inhibitors (like Prilosec or Prevacid) at the same time because of links to clostridium difficile infections.

Allen says ProPublica's social media experts looked around the country to find a similar online forum but without success.

This isn't like Yelp or Angie's List, where unhappy patients can anonymously pile on about a rude receptionist. "These are peoples' real identities, as far as we can tell, so if they say something to the group, their name is behind it. There's a little bit more accountability," Allen says.

It occurs to me that hospitals and doctors might be nervous about the page, fearing a free-for-all of complaints from emotional patients and family members who exaggerate claims or confuse the natural course of illness and disease with preventable misdiagnoses, infections, and medication mishaps. I see both sides, and appreciate the very human ways that can happen when people are in distress.

So I asked the American Hospital Association to take a look, noting that ProPublica wants providers to join the conversation.

Nancy Foster, AHA vice president of quality and patient safety, gives a tepid response: 

"When patients have concerns about their care, we encourage them to talk with staff at the hospital. Patients and their family members will find that their care givers are deeply concerned about making care right for them and that care givers also want to improve the care experience for future patients.
"Further, it is often helpful for patients to share their stories in forums like this one. However, as providers, we are both legally and ethically bound to honor our patients' privacy and not discuss their care in open public forums."

The American Medical Association did not respond to a request for comment.

Robert Wachter, MD, a patient safety expert at the University of California in San Francisco and chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at UCSF Medical Center, thinks the site could be useful for healthcare officials. "One learns about medical mistakes through a variety of lenses, and this is another one," he says. "I suspect there'll be some interesting, useful information, a fair amount of ranting, and lots of people with painful stories they simply want to share with others. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out and whether it gets any traction."

ProPublica's team members monitor discussions and comment, posting relevant news or reference articles. As the site gets going, Allen says, "We want to do keynote question-and-answer sections with healthcare leaders and patient advocates, and whatever the topics are that audiences are most interested in, we'll try to provide useful resources."

I wondered how Allen's team will handle comments specific to named hospital facilities or physicians. "Let's say someone posts 'St. Augustine Hospital in Kansas City, MO killed my father when it gave him an overdose of morphine?'" I asked.

He replies that ProPublica will try to seek comment, "and to the extent we become aware of something we know is not true, we will take it down."

Allen acknowledges that the Facebook effort "is kind of an experiment, to be honest. We don't know how it's going to go or what direction it's going to take. We're trying not to control it too much, but let the members participate and engage one another and direct the direction that things take."

I know people at ProPublica personally, and the excellent reputation it has garnered in the last four years. If anyone can do this in a responsible way, surely this organization can, and highlight at a human level the harm that negligence and nonchalance can cause.

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Cheryl Clark is a senior editor and California correspondent for HealthLeaders Media Online. She can be reached at cclark@healthleadersmedia.com. Follow Cheryl Clark on Twitter.

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