State Chapters
AAEMLa Update

AAEM and AAEMLa Score Another Success for Emergency Physicians

by Larry Weiss, MD JD FAAEM

AAEM and AAEMLa recently participated in another successful activity when we assisted a group of emergency physicians treated unfairly by some Medicare regional carriers. In recent years, some Medicare carriers decided to arbitrarily prohibit “multitasking,” the practice of caring for more than one patient at a time. They applied this rule to emergency physicians who oversee hyperbaric oxygen treatments while attending in the emergency department. Of course, emergency physicians “multitask” on a regular basis. Emergency physicians almost always care for multiple patients at any given time. We argued that the Medicare carriers acted arbitrarily when they applied this rule only to emergency physicians.

Dr. Keith Van Meter led the effort to lobby CMS to provide proper guidance to the regional Medicare carriers regarding “multitasking.” At Dr. Van Meter’s request, the AAEMLa Board passed a resolution at its February meeting urging corrective action, and we wrote a letter to our regional Medicare carrier. Barely one month later, the national AAEM Board reacted quickly by placing this item on its March meeting agenda. The AAEM Board voted to support the AAEMLa resolution.

Dr. Van Meter communicated the AAEM and AAEMLa resolutions to CMS and he feels that these resolutions made a decisive difference. How many national medical societies can react so quickly to support physicians in need? I had the pleasure of attending the March AAEM Board meeting. I can assure you that we have a Board that cares about its membership and will innately come to the assistance of emergency physicians treated unfairly.

Why did this happen to emergency physicians? Unfortunately, some non emergency physicians who practice hyperbaric medicine have lobbied their regional Medicare carriers to discriminate against emergency physicians. Perhaps they felt that this gave them a competitive advantage in communities where they competed with hyperbaric chambers staffed by emergency physicians. This represents a sad example of the divided nature of the “house of medicine.” As many of you know, ABEM has recognized hyperbaric medicine as a subspecialty of Emergency Medicine. Areas like Louisiana have an especially strong need for hyperbaric chambers because of the large commercial diving industry associated with offshore oil drilling, as well as recreational diving. We in Louisiana thank the AAEM Board for its support on this issue.

Regarding other matters, at our May meeting the AAEMLa Board voted to co-sponsor the LSU Emergency Medicine Board Review Course in September 2002. We also finalized our lecture schedule for our Annual Meeting in November. We will have an entire day of lectures on trauma. We will also elect an entire new slate of officers at our Annual Meeting. We will provide details of our Annual Meeting in the next issue of Common Sense. As in past years, we hope to see many AAEM members from around the country at our Annual Meeting. We also look forward to serving as the host state chapter for the AAEM Scientific Assembly in February 2003.

AAEMLa is the Louisiana State Chapter of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine. Dr Larry Weiss is the President of AAEMLa and can be reached at ldweiss@cox.net