Urgent Survey: CMA needs your help to advocate for better Medicare payments Since 2001, inflation has increased by 40%, yet physician Medicare fee-for-service payments have only increased by 7% - and that was largely due to the federal COVID-19 pandemic funding. Nationally, today’s Medicare payments on average, lag 40% behind the cost of providing care. The California Medical Association (CMA) is hearing that physicians are struggling to maintain their practices, which is negatively impacting patient access to care. While hospital and nursing home payments are indexed to inflation (and as a result have increased by 60% since 2001), the broken physician payment ... July 27, 2022 AMA, CMA 0 0 Comment Read More »
Physicians CMA President Elect Climate Change Forum We see this as THE most important thing you can do to show your support for CMA making climate an organizational priority THIS YEAR. Please join us and invite your CMA friends and colleagues. About this event Climate change is a health emergency, but what is our professional duty as physicians? Join other California Medical Association physicians to discuss CMA's opportunity to lead. Date: Friday, Sept 17, 2021 Time : 12:30-1:30 PDT Our climate is changing. Across California climate change is multiplying health risks: more frequent and severe heat waves, worsening droughts and megafires in ... September 3, 2021 CMA, Leadership Climate Change, CMA, Environmental Health 0 0 Comment Read More »
Important CMA House of Delegates Update Important CMA House of Delegates Update Delegates and Colleagues: Once again, the leadership of the California Medical Association (CMA) met to discuss how to best handle this year's annual session of the House of Delegates (HOD) considering the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic and emergence of the delta variant. While we greatly desired to have HOD meet in-person in a safe way, it is with a sense of responsibility and disappointment that we have moved to cancel our in-person meeting and replace it with a virtual session of the House. We have directed staff to ... August 24, 2021 CMA CMA, House of Delegates 0 0 Comment Read More »
CMA Announces New Statewide Effort to Promote Physician Wellness As the delivery of health care undergoes fundamental shifts and the rate of burnout among physicians continues to rise, physician wellness and professional fulfillment have become hot topics throughout the health care community – and for good reason. In a recent Medscape survey, nearly two-thirds of U.S. doctors said they felt burned out, depressed or both. More troubling still, one-third of respondents said such feelings affected their relationships with patients. Burnout can erode the quality of patient care and decrease patient satisfaction. It can also limit patient access to care, as physicians experiencing burnout ... January 18, 2019 CMA, Physician Wellness CMA, Physician Wellness 0 0 Comment Read More »
CMA urges Health Net to rescind recently announced payment policies Since Health Net first notified physicians in March of planned changes to its modifier 25 and emergency services payment policies for Medicare and Medi-Cal lines of business, the California Medical Association (CMA) has been working to educate the payor about physician concerns with the new policies. Last month, at CMA’s urging, Health Net agreed to delay implementation of the new policies until July 1, 2018, to allow time to review provider concerns with the new policies and to continue discussions with CMA and other stakeholders. CMA recently wrote to Health Net ... June 14, 2018 CMA, Health Net 0 0 Comment Read More »
