|
California Oncology Weekly
"Where California Oncologists Go For Answers!"
A collaborative publication of the
Medical Oncology Association of Southern California, Inc.
and the
Association of Northern California Oncologists, Inc.
December 6, 2016
|
|
|
|
California News
|
- Tomorrow, Wednesday, December 7th, 12:00pm, the California Dialogue on Cancer (CDOC) announces the upcoming webinar: Tobacco Cessation in Cancer Prevention and Treatment: A Call to Action for California Cancer Centers. This webinar will be presented by Elisa Tong, MD, from the University of California Davis, along with California's Comprehensive Cancer Control Program Director, Shauntay Davis, MPH. The tobacco cessation resource document developed by CDOC's Tobacco Stakeholder Advisory Group will be discussed. This webinar is being hosted by the California Smokers' Helpline and its training and technical assistance arm, the Center for Tobacco Cessation. Further details on the webinar are provided below. The Tobacco Cessation document can be accessed here http://bit.ly/CDOC_CalltoAction
- This Saturday, Dec 10th at 9:00 - 11:00am CMA & AMA are co-hosting an educational seminar on MACRA in San Francisco. There is no cost to attend this seminar. As CMS recently issued a final rule outlining the requirements of the new Quality Payment Program (QPP) for physicians that was created by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), the AMA in conjunction with California Medical Association and several component societies within the bay area region will be offering an upcoming educational session to help physicians understand what the MACRA final rule means for their practice and what they need to do as part of the QPP. If you are unable to attend in person it will also be available to stream online or via webinar. Register and learn more. Here is the link to the AMA's original fact sheet. Upcoming MACRA Sessions.
|
|
Noridian News
|
- Please reply by Thursday, December 8, to Wade Carlin
Wade.Carlin@noridian.com
, Provider Outreach and Education Representative, Noridian Healthcare Solutions LLC, Fargo, N.D. Noridian would like to hear from providers if Noridian's current offerings are meeting the needs of the provider community and, importantly, Noridian would like to hear your ideas on how they can continue to meet those needs into the future. Please complete the charts below by sharing details regarding Noridian's current offerings and let them know if they are useful. Also, looking into future years, what would you support using to best communicate with Noridian? Thank you.
Current Offerings
|
|
Offering Method
|
What works great, what needs to be added or improved?
|
|
1
|
Noridian Medicare Portal
|
|
|
2
|
|
|
|
3
|
Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
|
|
|
4
|
Contact Center staff
|
|
|
5
|
Email Lists
|
|
|
6
|
Educational Events (webinars, in-person events/visits, Ask the Contractor Teleconferences)
|
|
|
7
|
External Partnerships and Associations
|
|
|
8
|
Postal Mailings (postcards, booklets)
|
|
|
9
|
Tutorials / Online training videos
|
|
|
10
|
Other
|
|
Future - Identify new methods to provide useful information
|
1
|
Social Media (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
|
|
|
2
|
Smart Phone applications and downloaded tools
|
|
|
3
|
Skyping or Virtual Conversations (without PII or PHI)
|
|
|
4
|
Live Chat instant messaging
|
|
|
5
|
Secure messaging through the portal
|
|
|
6
|
Other
|
|
- Noridian/JEMAC has sent postcards to providers to bring awareness of the small timeframe where they can change their participation status in Medicare. The current annual election period ends on December 31.
* MLN Connects Provider News
Announcements
--CMS Launches New Online Tool to Make Quality Payment Program Easier for Clinicians; New Quality Payment Program Resources Available; Billing for Stem Cell Transplants
Claims, Pricers, and Codes
--
Events
--CMS 2016 Quality Conference-December 13-15
Publications
--Documentation Requirements for the Hospice Physician; Sample Hospice Notice of Election Statement MLN Matters Article-New; Quality Payment Program Call: Audio Recording and Transcript-New
* HCPCS Codes Used for Home Health Consolidated Billing Enforcement-Annual Update CR9771
* Claim Status Category and Claim Status Codes Update CR9769
* Immune Globulin Intravenous (IVIg) LCD-R6
* Office of Inspector General Report: Stem Cell Transplantation SE1624
* Documentation Requirements for the Hospice Physician Certification/Re-certification SE1628
* New Waived Tests CR9797
* Self-Administered Drug Exclusion List-R9
* Remittance Advice (RA) Webinar-December 16, 2016
* Advance Beneficiary Notice of Non-coverage (ABN) Webinar-December 6, 2016
* New Physician Specialty Code for Hospitalist-Revised CR9716
|
|
|
- DHCS implemented the first public facing release of PAVE, the department's new online provider enrollment data management system, on November 18. Over the last few months, the Provider Enrollment Division (PED) and provider users conducted extensive User Acceptance Testing to refine PAVE and prepare it for release. Providers may visit DHCS on Tuesdays each week from Noon to 2 p.m. for hands-on PAVE support, and PED hosts a weekly webinar on Thursdays for providers to call in with PAVE-related questions. Additional assistance with PAVE and information about future training events are available on the PAVE website. PED expects to define the requirements for the next PAVE release in 2017.
- The Medi-Cal 2020 waiver special terms and conditions requires DHCS to conduct an access assessment, inwhichits first access assessment advisory committee meeting was on November 18. DHCS is working with its External Quality Review Organization to conduct the assessment, which will evaluate primary, core specialty, and facility access to care for managed care beneficiaries. As part of the assessment process, the state established an advisory committee that includes representatives from consumer advocacy organizations, providers, provider associations, health plans, health plan associations, and legislative staff. The advisory committee will provide input into the assessment structure, including network adequacy requirements and metrics that should be considered, as well as provide feedback on the assessment structure and initial draft report.
Please visit the Access Assessment Webpage for more information.
- SB 1004 requires DHCS to establish standards and provide technical assistance for Medi-Cal managed care plans for the delivery of palliative care services. DHCS released an updated palliative care policy document and data analysis on September 1, 2016, in response to stakeholder feedback on the draft policy paper released in 2015. The updated policy document and webinar materials are posted on the SB 1004
website. DHCS is now developing specific instructions for Medi-Cal managed care health plans, and is sharing those draft instructions with stakeholders for comment prior to finalization. Please visit the above website to view the policy paper, stakeholder feedback, and materials from the webinar.
|
|
|
- The 2nd Annual UC Irvine Health Hematology Symposium, presented by the Department of Pathology and the Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology, will take place on Saturday, March 25, 2017, at Disney's Paradise Pier Hotel, Anaheim, CA.
Topics will include:
* Molecular diagnostics in selected disorders
* Myelodysplastic syndrome
* Primer on flow cytometry for the general practitioner
* Venous thromboembolism
* Approach to the evaluation of anemia
* Selected vector-borne diseases
* Lupus anticoagulant and antiphospholipid antibody syndrome.
- MOASC is proud to present their 2017 Oncology Summit: How Personalized Medicine fits into your treatment pattern for Lung cancer, Prostate cancer and Multiple Myeloma. Saturday, March 11, 2017, 7:30am to 3:30pm at the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach. The confirmed speakers for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer are: Edward Garon, MD, Associate Professor Medical Oncology, UCLA and Karen Reckamp, MD, MS, Associate Professor Medical Oncology, City of Hope; for Prostate Cancer, Przemyslaw Twardowski, MD, Associate Professor Medical Oncology, City of Hope and David I Quinn, MD, Associate Professor Medical Oncology, USC, and for Multiple Myeloma, James R. Berenson, MD, and Amrita Krishnan, MD, FACP,
Director, Judy and Bernard Briskin Center for Myeloma, City of Hope.
For complete information on this superb program, please contact the MOASC Office at 909-985-9061 ext.1 or
moasc@moasc.org
or
www.moasc.org
.
|
|
|
- Read
Bobbi Buell's summary and analysis of the CY2017 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, Outpatient Prospective Payment System, and coding updates for 2017 at
www.anco-online.org/BBCY2017MPFS.pdf. Join Bobbi for her annual Medicare update webcasts on:
* December 16 at 9AM PT
- ANCO's Medicare Reimbursement for Oncology 2017 with Bobbi Buell takes place January 4 in San Jose and January 5 in Sacramento. Learn the latest information impacting Medicare's oncology reimbursement for 2017. These meetings are supported by ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Exelixis, Helsinn Oncology, and Merck. Download the meeting announcement and registration form at www.anco-online.org/MedicareUpdate2017.pdf.
- ANCO's SABCS Highlights 2016 will take place on January 26 at The Claremont Resort in Oakland. Download the meeting announcement and registration form at www.anco-online.org/SABCSHL2016.pdf.
- ANCO is pleased to announce the 17th Multidisciplinary Management of Cancers: A Case-based Approach on March 17-19, 2017 at The Silverado Resort and Spa in Napa. Registration and housing now open at www.multicancers.org.
- UC San Francisco's Thomas Martin, M.D., will present Back to Basics: Tenets of Testing in Myeloma Diagnostics--A Webinar with Live Q&A on December 12. The webinars are organized by MediCom Worldwide. Go to http://forms.medicaled.com/zstdeXWy for more information and to register.
-
ANCO's 2016 Annual Report is now available online at
www.anco-online.org/AR2016.pdf.
|
|
National News
|
- Yesterday, the Senate passed the 21st Century Cures Act. The House of Representatives passed the bill overwhelmingly last week. Vice President Joe Biden took the rare step of presiding over the Senate to oversee the act's approval of a cloture vote that easily obtained the 60 votes needed to officially end debate on the floor. The Senate is expected to clear the bill this week and then it will be sent to President Barack Obama's desk. The legislation contains $4.8 billion in funding for the National Institutes of Health for programs like Obama's precision medicine initiative and Biden's cancer research "moonshot" program. Senators stood up and applauded when the bill was amended to name the program after Biden's son Beau, who died from brain cancer last May at the age of 46.
- Rep. Tom Price, the Georgia Republican and physician picked by President-elect Donald Trump to oversee the health and availability of essential human services to all Americans, belongs to a medical association whose unconventional views are certain to raise questions during his confirmation hearings next year. Trump nominated Price, re-elected last month to a seventh term, to become secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. An orthopedic surgeon, he is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, whose 5,000 members consider the group a nonpartisan professional organization dedicated to "preserving the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and the practice of private medicine." Tom Price Linked To Association Of American Physicians, Surgeons
- UnitedHealthcare's Network Bulletin (December 2016) is now available online at http://unitedhealthcareonline.com > Tools & Resources > News & Network Bulletin and features articles about the CMS-Required Model of Care Training, Communication Effectiveness Survey, and Improving HEDIS Rates: Documenting for Body Mass Index.
- The American Medical Association (AMA) has recently released new guidance on mobile health applications (mHealth apps) and devices that promote safe and effective patient care.
The policy states that AMA's efforts for coverage, payment and financial incentives will be centered around mHealth apps that do the following:
- Support the establishment or continuation of a valid patient-physician relationship;
- Have a clinical evidence base to support their use in order to ensure mHealth app safety and effectiveness;
- Follow evidence-based practice guidelines, to the degree they are available, to ensure patient safety, quality of care and positive health outcomes;
- Support care delivery that is patient-centered, promotes care coordination and facilitates team-based communication;
- Support data portability and interoperability in order to promote care coordination through medical home and accountable care models;
- Abide by state licensure laws and state medical practice laws and requirements in the state in which the patient receives services facilitated by the app;
- Require that physicians and other health practitioners delivering services through the app be licensed in the state where the patient receives services, or be providing these services as otherwise authorized by that state's medical board; and
- Ensure that the delivery of any services via the app be consistent with state scope of practice laws."
The AMA has also taken several steps recently to advance digital health innovation that is patient-centered, evidence based and interoperable and outcomes focused, including partnerships and collaborations. Additionally, the AMA launched a workgroup to accelerate telehealth services into clinical practice in 2015, and adopted new guidance for the ethical practice of telemedicine earlier this year. Most recently, the AMA has adopted a new telehealth modifier -95.
|
Affiliate Association News
-
ASCO's CancerLinQ Discovery is a groundbreaking offering of CancerLinQ
that will provide insights through the analysis of real-world cancer care data. CancerLinQ Discovery will provide highly curated de-identified sets of clinical data with the objective of creating new clinical knowledge and improving patient outcomes. It will derive these sets from the the rapidly-growing CancerLinQ database that now includes over 1.5 million patient records and more than 70 oncology practices that have agreed to contribute data to CancerLinQ's core quality improvement and data-sharing platform. For more information on how to participate or partner with CancerLinQ, please visit
www.CancerLinQ.org.
- ASCO is accepting applications for its prestigious Health Policy Fellowship, a one-year Fellowship opportunity designed to give early-career oncologists the unique skills necessary to monitor and shape the regulatory and legislative policies that directly affect the practice environment and impact patients with cancer and their care teams. The deadline for submitting applications is December 30 at
www.asco.org/node/7556.
- A collaboration between ASCO and the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) enables participants of ACSO's Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI) to receive Maintenance of Certification (MOC) Practice Assessment pointsfrom ABIM. For more information on ABIM MOC, eligibility, and requirements, please visit
http://university.asco.org/practice-assessment-activities.
- ASH's 2017 Highlights of ASH in North America will take place in Seattle on January 27-28. Go to
www.hematology.org/highlights for more information and to register.
- NCCN has published updated NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®) with NCCN Evidence Blocks™ for bone cancer (V.2017); chemotherapy-induced anemia (V2.2017); colon cancer, rectal cancer, and anal carcinoma (V1.2017); multiple myeloma (V3.2017); non-small cell lung cancer (V3.2017). For the complete updated versions of the NCCN Guidelines, NCCN Guidelines with NCCN Evidence Blocks™, the NCCN Compendium®, the NCCN Chemotherapy Order Templates (NCCN Templates®), and the NCCN Imaging Appropriate Use Criteria (NCCN Imaging AUC™), please visit
www.nccn.org.
|
|
|
|
- ARIAD Pharmaceuticals
informs ANCO and MOASC that the United States Food and Drug Administration has granted Iclusig
full approval for the treatment of adult patients with chronic phase, accelerated phase, and blast phase chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) or Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Ph+ ALL) for whom no other tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) therapy is indicated; and for the treatment of adult patients with T315I-positive CML (chronic phase, accelerated phase, or blast phase) or T315I positive Ph+ ALL.
- TEVA Oncology informs ANCO and MOASC that CMS has assigned HCPCS code J9034 (1mg) to Bendeka.
- This year at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting, Genentech presented data for nine medicines, which were included in more than 60 abstracts [press release]. These include results for: Gazyva® (obinutuzumab, VenclextaTM (venetoclax), Rituxan® (rituximab). For additional Genentech perspective, including an editorial on how well-designed clinical trials may help physicians navigate a complex and evolving treatment landscape, visit the Hematology hub.
|
|
|
-
MOASC CALENDAR
LunchTime Series
Oncology Roundtable Teleconference
ASCO State Affiliate
|
Best of 17th WCLC (International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, San Francisco, February 4)
|
|
|
|
|
The
Medical Oncology Association of Southern California
(MOASC) is a leading oncology society that advances and protects the ability of cancer patients to obtain, and the ability of the oncology physicians to provide, optimal cancer care. The
Association of Northern California Oncologists
(ANCO) is an association of hematologists/oncologists dedicated to promoting high professional standards of cancer care by providing a forum for the exchange of ideas, data, and knowledge.
The material contained in the
California Oncology Weekly
is intended as general information for ANCO and MOASC members. Because diagnostic, treatment, contracting, coding, and billing decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis, any such information contained in the
California Oncology Weekly
may not apply in any given situation. Members are encouraged to contact their own consultants or advisors to obtain specific advice on matters relating to contracting, coding, and billing. The information contained in
California Oncology Weekly
should not be used as a substitute for such advice.
This publication provides a summary of regulations affecting oncology and its business practices. Reading this newsletter does not substitute for understanding regulations and verifying the validity of every claim. This information is time-sensitive and is subject to change. MOASC or ANCO accepts no liability for any statements or articles herein.
CPT codes are owned and trademarked by the American Medical Association. All Rights Reserved.
MOASC: P.O. Box 161, Upland, CA 91785 | P (909) 985-9061 | F (909) 804-5006| www.moasc.org
ANCO: P.O. Box 151109, San Rafael, CA 94915 | P (415) 472-3960 | F (415) 472-3961 | www.anco-online.org
|
|
| |
|
