Thursday December 17, 2020
Good news on the third stimulus from HHS. As we may have been keeping you up and also many of you have applied for a third stimulus, checks have been sent since last night and some of you have already received them. This is in addition to the previous Stimulus I, which was 6.2% of Medicare revenues, second stimulus with a total of 2% gross revenues, and the third one is yet to be decided, but checks are arriving. 
Congressional negotiators on the long-delayed $900 billion COVID-19 economic relief package worked through a handful of remaining holdups Thursday as they labored to seal a final agreement for more help to businesses and the unemployed and new stimulus payments to most Americans.

Top congressional leaders also finally acknowledged they will have to pass a temporary government-wide funding bill to avoid a partial shutdown Friday at midnight, though House leaders haven't scheduled a vote yet.

ASIPP has been working tirelessly for passage of this bill. This provides a second PPP, if you meet the criteria, with 30% revenue reduction (a very harsh requirement that we hope to help change) and also low-interest loans up to $10 million or 3 times gross revenue.
Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, seemed to meet criteria for emergency use authorization (EUA), agency staff said in a briefing document released on Tuesday.

And as with the Pfizer/BioNTech product that won authorization last week, the technical review found few issues with Moderna's trial data.

Similar to last week, the committee will decide whether, based on the totality of scientific evidence, the vaccine "may be effective" in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, and whether the benefits outweigh the risks.

And similar to last week, FDA technical staff did not raise any serious concerns. Notably, Moderna is requesting authorization for the vaccine to be used in adults 18 and older -- unlike the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which was authorized for adolescents as young as 16 despite limited data. That proved to be a sticking point for the "no" voters at last week's meeting.
Research into cervical spinal pain syndrome has indicated that the cervical facet joints can be a potent source of neck pain, headache, and referred pain into the upper extremities. There have been multiple diagnostic accuracy studies, most commonly utilizing diagnostic facet joint nerve blocks and an acute pain model, as Bogduk has proposed. Subsequently, Manchikanti has focused on the importance of the chronic pain model and longer lasting relief with diagnostic blocks as illustrated in the September 2020 diagnostic accuracy study.

Surprised billing compromise could soon pass congress
As Congress rushes to get out of town before the Christmas and New Year's holidays, some legislators are hoping that a compromise bill on surprise billing will be passed before they leave.

The House and Senate have long dithered over the best way to solve the problem of surprise billing, which occurs when a patient who thought he or she was receiving services inside their insurance plan's network gets a "surprise bill" for services rendered by out-of-network providers. This can happen when, for example, a surgeon at an in-network hospital is out-of-network, or they receive emergency services like an ambulance ride from an out-of-network provider.
On November 20, 2020, in addition to new Stark Law regulations intended to accommodate value-based financial arrangements with physicians, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued final regulations that significantly overhaul existing Stark Law exceptions, special rules and definitions. Published in the Federal Register on December 2, these regulatory changes will make it easier for health care entities to comply with the Stark Law.
Hospital volumes, which had largely recovered in September after crashing last spring, are dropping again, according to new data from Strata Decision Technologies, a Chicago-based analytics firm.

For the 2 weeks that ended November 28, inpatient admissions were 6.2% below what they'd been on November 14 and 2.1% below what they'd been on October 28. Compared with the same intervals in 2019, admissions were off 4.4% for the 14-day period and 3.7% for the 30-day period.
Hospitals are struggling to decide who should receive the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine first among their workforce, sometimes having to choose certain teams and personnel over others, according to NBC News.

A CDC advisory committee recommended that healthcare workers be among the first recipients of the new vaccine, approved just last week by the FDA, and that hospitals target those deemed most at-risk. But the committee did not specify those healthcare workers, and it's unlikely there are enough doses to administer to all who want one.
"Automation" and "artificial intelligence" are becoming part of the fabric of medical care, but can put clinicians on alert, as many new technologies do -- even more so because most examples come from science fiction.
"'Terminator,' 'Ex Machina,' '2001: A Space Odyssey' are all sexy and they sell because they're playing off our worst existential fears," said Nathan Tenhundfeld, PhD, principal investigator at the Advanced Teaming, Technology, Automation, & Computing Human Factors Lab and assistant professor of psychology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

The American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (ASIPP) partners with Willow Risk Advisors to create an exclusive policy available to ASIPP members. In an effort to further increase value to its physician members, ASIPP has endorsed Willow Risk Advisors as their professional liability insurance broker. Teaming up with the NORCAL group, Willow Risk has developed an exclusive Medical Malpractice Insurance Program tailored specifically to serve interventional pain physicians.

During these hard times, ASIPP® would like to help our members by offering additional benefits for renewing your membership by December 31, 2020.


All sessions from the September 2020 meeting are available through June 2021 for a reduced fee. On-demand registration also provides access to all of the great resources available in the exhibit hall.

Be a part of the ASIPP® 2021 Annual Meeting at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside on June 24-26, 2021.
Customized waiting room TV exclusively for ASIPP® members.
Create your own ad-free television broadcasts using our videos,
custom informational slides and your own YouTube videos.
Even add local weather reports, news and live messages.