News and Updates

November 2011 Assembly Report

by Robert Feder, M.D.
New Hampshire APA Assembly Rep

1. Financial
   The APA is in excellent financial shape at present. We are ending the year with a 2.85 million dollar surplus, attributable to a significant decrease in expenses. This is mainly due to the excellent management of the central office in DC which has left many staff positions unfilled. The APA reserves also remain very strong despite a bad year on Wall Street.
2. Maintenance of Certification (MOC)
   Mary Helen Davis, M.D., Chair of the Ad Hoc Work Group on Maintenance of Certification, gave a report for her group. There appears to be little resistance forming officially from the APA in regard to the American Board of Medical Specialists recent changes in MOC requirements, which many are finding burdensome and inappropriate. The feeling of the work group is that it is “a done deal” and can’t be changed. Potential good news is that the Board of Psychiatry and Neurology will not be requiring actual submission of forms for patient quality projects; rather, this will proceed on an “honor system” basis of simply checking off that it has been done. The Work Group was more optimistic that Maintenance of Licensure (MOL) requirements (dictated by State Medical Boards) will be less invasive to practice and that there is still time to have a proactive effect on those.
   The Assembly passed an Action Paper calling for the creation of a separate task force to specificallly evaluate the various MOC and MOL proposals and their validity. The APA Board may choose to make this a new charge for the existing Work Group.
3. Action Papers
   Action papers relating to the following items were passed by the Assembly. They all require passage by the Board (next month) before they become APA policy.
   1. Attempting to provide the option for 30 day prescriptions with managed pharmacy plans that are requiring 90 day prescriptions
   2. Requiring managed care plans to allow patients access to care to any psychiatrist at that psychiatrist’s rates when the managed care plan cannot provide a psychiatrist within their own panel (Any Willing Provider Redux)
   3. Encouraging the use of the phrase “completed suicide” in place of “committed suicide”. The latter is felt to have a more perjorative connotation, a la “committed murder”.
   4. Having an official policy statement recognizing Health Care as a fundamental human right.
   5. Developing and publishing documentation templates for the various psychiatric CPT codes
   6. Providing increased staff funding to develop a spot on the APA website where members can review their experiences with various electronic medical records.
   7. Allowing application for APA Fellowship immediately after passing the Psychiatry Boards, rather than after 5 years of APA membership.

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