California Oncology Weekly
"Where California Oncologists Go For Answers!"
A publication of the
Medical Oncology Association of Southern California, Inc.
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This Weekly's Hot Topics
- Tomorrow at 10am CMMI to present second webinar on direct contracting payment methodology CMS News
- Tomorrow at 5:30pm MOASC webinar for physicians and clinicians with California Medicare contractor Medical Director MOASC News
- USP797 & USP800 are in full force National News
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- It is time to start compiling all of your information to file your Medi-Cal Meaningful Use (MU) attestations for Program Year 2019. The California State Level Registry (SLR) opened on January 2, 2020 and will close March 31, 2020. As in previous years, Eligible Professionals that have been prequalified can attest without having to prove eligibility for the program other than DHCS' requirement showing proof of having had at least one Medi-Cal billable encounter during the prequalified representative period. The 2019 clinic prequalification list is available and can be accessed by clicking here; eligible professionals should click here. DHCS anticipates that Program Year 2020 Attestations will open April 1, 2020, as CMS has revised the reporting period for 2020 to 90 days MU and 90 days CQM reporting. The 2020 prequalification list for clinics will not be available until July 2020. However, DHCS plans to allow clinics to use the 2019 prequalification list to initially register for 2020, but payment will not be issued until eligibility is confirmed by the 2020 prequalification list or the submission of representative period encounter data by the clinic. DHCS hopes to have the 2020 prequalification list for professionals available by April 1, 2020. For more information, please click here.
The California Technical Assistance Program (CTAP), which began in late 2015, will officially close on June 30, 2020.
- On January 10, California governor Gavin Newsom unveiled his proposed 2020-21 state budget. In a press conference that lasted nearly three hours, the governor explained how the $222.2 billion budget (PDF) addresses some of the most pressing problems facing Californians, including catastrophic wildfires and public education funding. The budget also signaled Newsom's health care priorities, making care more affordable, improving the state's behavioral health system, and more.
T
he CHCF and KFF poll last year also found that 80% of Californians wanted the governor and legislature to prioritize making health care more affordable. The proposal is the start of the budget negotiation process with lawmakers and will culminate in a final state budget by June 15. Key health care proposals included in the budget are: 1)
Investing in
Medi-Cal Healthier California for All (formerly known as CalAIM); 2)
Adding supplemental funding for non-hospital 340B clinics
to cover losses due to the Medi-Cal RX initiative with implementation of the program to begin on January 2021, halfway into the state's fiscal year; 3
)
Creating the Office of Health Care Affordability
; 4)
Helping County Behavioral Health Systems in California
; 5)
Tackling Homelessness Across the State
, and 6)
Expanding Health Coverage to Undocumented Seniors.
- California-based Sutter Health is working with Lyft to offer customized transportation services to help patients access care, and staff can also make use of the service. The partnership will allow Sutter hospitals and care sites around Northern California to customize ride-hailing services depending on the needs of their communities.
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- Noridian/JEMAC has the following updates on their website
Publications:
* National Correct Coding Initiative (NCCI)
* Quality Payment Program: Check Your Final 2019 MIPS Eligibility Status
* Quality Payment Program: MIPS Low-Volume Threshold Criteria for 2019
* Self-Administered Drug Exclusion List-R16
* Billing and Coding: Nerve Blockade for Treatment of Chronic Pain and Neuropathy-R2
* AUC for Advanced Diagnostic Imaging-Educational and Operations Testing Period-Claims Processing Requirements-Revised CR11268
* Update to Medicare Claims Processing Manual, Chapters 1, 23, and 35 CR10882
Forthcoming Noridian JEMAC meetings/webinars/workshop
* Medicare Part A/B Revalidation Webinar (January 29)
* Submitting Your Enrollment Online Part 1(I&A) Webinar (February 26)
* Common Error when Enrolling in Medicare Webinar (March 4)
* Submitting Your Enrollment Online Part 2 *(PECOS) Webinar (March 18)
* Rebuttal, Reconsiderations and CAPS Webinar (April 8)
* Medicare Part A/B Revalidation Webinar (April 22)
For more information and to register visit:
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- TOMORROW! MOASC has secured a special PHYSICIAN'S encore webinar with the California Medicare contractor Medical Director, Arthur Lurvey, MD, FACP, FACE, who will present Getting Ready for Medicare in 2020 and 2021, January 22, 2020 at 5:30pm-PST. Physicians, NPP's and all interested staff are welcome. The webinar affords physicians to enter into live dialogue and Q&A with the California Medicare medical director. For more information, and to register for this webinar, contact the MOASC office at
moasc@moasc.org or call 909-985-9061 x1.
- Don't miss this opportunity! Get a concise overview of the most important advances presented at the ASH annual meeting. Attend the MOASC Spotlight on Hematology, Saturday, February 1, 2020, 9am to 2pm, at The Waterfront Hilton in Huntington Beach. Through a grant from MOASC, UCI brings speakers from City of Hope, Loma Linda and UCI to present the highlights from ASH's Annual Meeting & Exposition. Hear a distillation of the new discoveries that are moving the field forward and improving patient care and learn how you can apply those advances in your own practice. Contact the MOASC office at 909-985-9061 ext.1 or moasc@moasc.org or www.moasc.org
- Join MOASC Board member and key opinion leader, Dr. Ashkan Lashkari (Providence Tarzana Medical Center) will lead a round table discussion on NSCLC / Metastatic NSCLC on February 18, 2020 at 7PM, at Estate Restaurant + Bar - 1519 Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA 90403. This program is open to, and intended for medical oncologists treating NSCLC/Metastatic NSCLC. RSVP at
www.targetedonc.com/events
.
- Saturday, March 14, come celebrate MOASC's 30th Anniversary and listen to the
"Exciting Advances in Oncology"
as the focus of the MOASC 2020 Annual Oncology Summit Educational Symposium, Saturday, March 14
, 2020 at the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach
. Speakers will highlight advances in several areas of oncology including melanoma, lymphoma, breast, colon, prostate, kidney, and lung cancers, among others. To register, contact the MOASC office at moasc@moasc.org or 909-985-9061 x1. #MOASC30
- MOASC Member, City of Hope CME presents: Immunotherapy of Cancer: CAR T Cell to Checkpoint Inhibitors, March 18, 2020 to March 21, 2020 at the Waldorf Astoria, Las Vegas, Nevada. For more information click
here. To register go to https://cme.cityofhope.org/eventinfo_11295.html
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- Applications now being accepted for ANCO's Travel Awards to Fellows and Young Clinicians to support attendance at the ASCO Annual Meeting, ASH Annual Meeting, or other national oncology meeting in 2020. The deadline for submission is March 31. Awards will be announced by April 30. Learn more at
https://anco.org/membership/fellow-benefits/
.
- ANCO members are encouraged to provide feedback on California's CURES program by completing a recently e-mailed UC Davis
survey
. The e-mail was from the Medical Board of California.
- Presentations from the Best of San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium Northern California are now available.
-
REGISTER
for the 20th Multidisciplinary Management of Cancers:
A Case-based Approach taking place in Napa on March 13-15.
- In order to streamline the amount of e-mail sent from ANCO, the California Oncology Weekly will no longer be e-distributed to ANCO members. However, ANCO members may read current editions of the California Oncology Weekly online under the Member Portal at
https://anco.org/anco-report
.
- Follow ANCO on Twitter at
@ANCO News
.
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National News
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Reminder: USP797 & USP800 are in full force.
While your focus may be on the infusion side of mixing, compounding and delivery, keep in mind that for your oral dispensing pharmacy to meet the USP800 standards your practice will need a separate storage area, a separate counting area with oncology-specific designation of the space given, and separate counting trays for oncology medications.
- HHS released a draft strategic plan outlining the federal government's goals and objectives through 2025 for ensuring Americans have access to their electronic health information. The plan, developed by Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and more than two dozen other agencies, explains how the government plans to use technology to promote health and wellness, improve care delivery and patient experience, create a secure, data-driven culture to expedite research and innovation, and support development of an interoperable health IT infrastructure.
- The PRI Center for Medical Economics and Innovation has produced a paper by Wayne Winegarden that explores ways legislators can have a positive impact on drug affordability, and how current proposals will not achieve that goal. Winegarden proposes a number of reforms, of particular interest is the need to reform the role of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Among the reforms suggested by Winegarden are ending the current system of PBMs negotiating rebates off the list price. Instead, he proposes a system based on the net price paid by the patient or insurer. Doing so would eliminate disincentives favoring medicines with more expensive list prices but higher rebates. He also suggests requiring PBMs to publicly publish rebates, discounts, and price concessions, so patients and doctors can more easily recognize the costs of alternative medicines. (Read More) The full issue brief can be found here. You are encouraged to take a look, and keep it in mind as organized oncology advocates for better and more affordable access to prescription drugs.
- One of the entrepreneurs behind the drug-pricing information site GoodRx wants to make conversations about cancer easier with a new site called CancerSurvivalRates.com. Launched this month, its mission is to make information about cancer prognoses more accessible to patients and families. The idea is to improve on what people can find on the internet or even sometimes in their doctors' offices. Oncologists may be leery of their patients' relying on the web for cancer survival rates or estimates of how long a patient might live, particularly given how many factors come into play for any individual, but, GoodRx co-founder, drug supply chain veteran Stephen Buck, worked with a technology expert and several oncologists to develop the Cancer Survival Rates website to make it easier for people with cancer and their families to find information about cancer prognoses. Buck, along with oncologists and other experts who have served as advisers on the project, say such information can be the basis for a deeper discussion with clinicians about what the future might hold.
- Physicians spend 16 minutes and 14 seconds, on average, using an EHR for each patient encounter, with 11% of the time spent on EHRs occurring after hours. The mean active time for primary care physicians was 19 minutes and 48 seconds, and for those in family medicine, it was an average of 15 minutes and 52 seconds per encounter, researchers reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine
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CMS News
Search for ICD-10-CM codes; How to use the codes; Access multiple fiscal year version sets with comprehensive results.
- CMS Medicare Learning Network Connects articles of interest:
- Last Friday, January 17, 2020, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) updated the Open Payments dataset to reflect changes to the data that took place since the last publication in June 2019. The updated dataset is now available for viewing at
https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/
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Affiliate Association News
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- On January 30, 2020, join Targeted Oncology™ for a sit-down discussion with key opinion leader: Dr. Natalie Galanina from UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. Experts will discuss pathology report findings, patient diagnostic workup, the most likely diagnosis and potential treatment options across multiple cases in a given therapeutic area. The round table discussion on Lymphoma will start at 7pm, at George's at the Cove - 1250 Prospect Street, La Jolla, CA 92037. These programs are open to, and intended for medical oncologists treating lymphoma. Please RSVP at
www.targetedonc.com/events
.
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Now is the time to share your findings at ASCO 2020, the largest multidisciplinary oncology conference in the world.
With more than 3,500 opportunities for scientific presentations and discussions. The deadline to submit is February 11.
Submit an Abstract. The 2020 ASCO Annual Meeting is being held May 29 - June 2, 2020 at McCormick Place in Chicago, IL.
- MOASC member,
The Angeles Clinic, with the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC), will be hosting Advanced CSCC Regional Lecture, featuring Dr. Omid Hamid and Dr. Mark Faries these experts will discuss caring for patients with CSCC and high-risk non-melanoma skin cancers. On February 5, 2020 at Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steakhouse, 10250 Santa Monica Blvd, Suite 1700 Los Angeles, CA 90067.*This event is complimentary (dinner to be provided), and seating is limited to the first 50 registrants
.
Register online at
bit.ly/2RAewRn.
View invitation
HERE
.
- MOASC Board member and key opinion leader, Dr. Ashkan Lashkari (Providence Tarzana Medical Center), with Targeted Oncology™, will lead a round table discussion on NSCLC / Metastatic NSCLC on February 18, 2020 at 7PM, at Estate Restaurant + Bar - 1519 Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA 90403. This program is open to, and intended for medical oncologists treating NSCLC/Metastatic NSCLC. RSVP at
www.targetedonc.com/events
.
- Save the Date! National Cancer Survivors Day® is Sunday, June 7, 2020.
www.ncsd.org
- NCCN has published updated guidelines for bladder cancer and chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphoma at
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MOASC CALENDAR
Spotlight On Hematology
February 1, 2020
City of Hope CME presents: Immunotherapy of Cancer: CAR T Cell to Checkpoint Inhibitors
March 18-21, 2020
(Stanford, April 2-3, 2020)
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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 material contained in the
California Oncology Weekly
is intended as general information for 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 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
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