Dear Colleagues:
Your voice is needed STAT to support two bills under consideration in the Rhode Island legislature to address improper Maintenance of Certification (MOC) mandates.
Educating legislators about the need for S 301 and H 5247 is urgently needed.
If adopted, these bills will help address MOC abuse and promote competition to American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) controlled products by alternatives like the National Board of Physicians and Surgeons (NBPAS).
Here is the legislative summary of what SB 301 and H 5247 do: “Authorizes hospital medical staff to elect whether or not to participate in a maintenance of certification program, to elect medical specialty board to implement the program and prohibits insurers from denying reimbursement based solely on this election.”
Put simply, these bills would help give medical staff the ability to reject MOC requirements and also allow the choice of alternatives, like NBPAS, when recertification requirements are adopted.
Bill Text:
http://webserver.rilin.state.ri.us/BillText/BillText19/SenateText19/S0301.pdf
Please stand with your colleagues and patients in support of S 301 and H 5247. They aim to help Rhode Island physicians focus more on their patients and less on meaningless busywork.
Please Email The Senate President, House Speaker and Other Leaders in the Rhode Island General Assembly and ask them to support S 301 and H 5247.
For many email apps, clicking here, will open a new message with the addresses and a suggested message filled in.
(If your email program is the desktop version of Microsoft Outlook, click here for a more compatible message.)
Please feel free to edit the message to your liking. And be sure to include your name and city at the bottom. If the link doesn’t work for you, simply copy and paste the below message and email addresses into a new email message.
Here is a suggestion for what you might say:
Dear President Ruggerio and Speaker Mattiello:
I am a Rhode Island physician asking for your support of S 301 and H 5247. These bills will help protect patients’ access to quality medical care while lowering costs. Counterproductive requirements imposed by out-of-state certification boards on physicians in Rhode Island are currently increasing costs to patients, and the state, without a corresponding gain in quality. It is time to encourage competition among specialty boards to improve the continuing education options available for physicians and spur innovation. Help decrease costs and increase the availability of high-quality medical care in this state by moving forward with consideration of S 301 and H 5247 .
Sincerely,
Here is a list of committee members’ email addresses you can copy and paste into the TO line of your message:
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Contacting them delivers a strong message to the legislators—they need to know you are watching the process.
Thank you for your help and please stay tuned for future updates.
~AAPS
