FW: From ACA - News You Can Use

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F.Y.I., from the American Chiropractic Association, Cheers, Vern Saboe, DCACA Delegate for Oregon From: The American Chiropractic Association [mailto:memberinfo@...] Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 12:54 PMvsaboe@...Subject: From ACA - News You Can Use Having trouble viewing this email? Click here Dear members of the ACA family, As you may be aware, we have lost another one of our own. Dr. Ritch passed away on Saturday. He died of a sudden and totally unexpected heart attack. Dr. was a leader within the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) and the chiropractic profession for many years. His knowledge of all things Medicare was second to none. He wrote many articles for ACA, the Chiropractic Summit and the chiropractic media. Dr. had a fervent desire to see our doctors treated as equals to other physician-level providers by the regulatory and legislative world. In recent weeks, Dr. reminded us again of the importance of developing and maintaining ongoing strategies towards the attainment of full scope of practice and primary care provider status within Medicare. As ACA president, I can guarantee that ACA will now work harder than ever to reach the goals Dr. has set for this profession. His funeral is Thursday, March 22. If anyone has questions regarding the arrangements please feel free to contact me. This past weekend, more than 500 faculty members from chiropractic colleges and researchers from around the world gathered in Las Vegas for ACC-RAC 2012. ACA was represented by Vice President Dr. Hamm, Chairman Pro Tem, Dr. Simone, Dr. Elise Hewitt, Dr. Lauretti and Executive Vice President Bill O'Connell. However, there were many, many other ACA members at the meeting, including five scholarship winners from chiropractic colleges across the country. The scholarship program was created by SACA leader Emma Summers from University of Bridgeport College of Chiropractic. Great job, Emma! To begin the weekend, ACA's Executive Committee (EC) met with our good friends from Foot Levelers. The details are forthcoming, but we created an outline for a five-year partnership agreement between our two organizations. EC members also met with leaders from the Association of College Presidents, the Federation of Chiropractic Licensing boards, NCMIC and others, and we made presentations to many groups including researchers, development officers, the American Public Health Association, doctors from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and chiropractic college presidents. One of the EC's goals for this year is to strengthen ACA's intraprofessional relationships. I believe that the EC's activities during this year's ACC-RAC meeting helped us go a long way toward that end. Additional highlights include the FACA breakfast lead by Dr. Lauretti. The EC had the opportunity to speak with around 30 attendees about how ACA can better service college faculty members and the colleges in general. EC members also met with two of the most important members of the profession's research community, Dr. Goertz and Dr. . These meetings focused on a host of issues, but top priorities included the progress of the Medicare demo research project and the importance of the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics (JMPT), our chiropractic's top scientific journal, to the profession. A few other items caught my interest this week:The " Medical, Inc. " team has completed about half of the filming of their documentary and has started the editing process. Producer Jeff Hays expects the film to be completed in August. Once the film is ready, it will be distributed first to movie theaters, second to the DVD market and third to cable networks. ACA is looking into how it can help with the distribution process. This week we also saw ChiroVoice reach more than 60,000 participants. I would like to thank EVERYONE who has helped us reach this milestone. Let's not forget that this ongoing program is only as effective as the people who participate. That said, I think 75,000 participants is within reach-especially if we can get Alabama, Maine, Ohio and Texas to step up the competition a bit. And let's not forget the 46 states! Think about it, if we all sign up just a few patients this next week we will begin to make a dent! Speaking of grass roots advocacy. I just got an email from our delegates in New York. Once again the New York State Chiropractic Association is stepping up with another $2,500 donation to CHAMP. Well done Drs. Herd and Wolfson. Do I hear any other chiropractic champions? Remember, we should be able to enlist all 50 state associations to help. I would like to ask each of you to place this item on the agenda at the state meetings you attend. Let's see what we can do to enlist CHAMP participation at the state level! Dr. Dale White can provide you with any additional information you may need. CHAMP helps ACA " stay in the game. " We don't have any hidden super PACs helping us. It's up to you and me!The Executive Committee has spent considerable time recently discussing ACA's annual leadership/planning meeting. Some of you may already know that we eliminated our House of Delegates meeting this year in order to be a little more budget conscious. In its place, we decided to hold a smaller planning session. The purpose of the session will be to help our committees focus on action steps that lead toward accomplishing the goals set in our strategic plan and to begin work on " Vision 2022 " -a path leading our profession toward evidenced, informed, patient-centered care, as well as third-party payer parity, full participation in all health care models and unimpeded patient access to the services provided by doctors of chiropractic in a health care system whose patients no longer suffer the effects of provider discrimination. Lastly, I wanted to tell you about the CCE stakeholders meeting held in conjunction with ACC-RAC. There were 37 attendees in a closed meeting that included representatives from most of the profession's organizations and colleges. The meeting was chaired by Dr. Craig Little, CCE chairman. The meeting began with a review of a letter dated March 15, 2012, from M. Ochoa, assistant secretary for postsecondary education. The letter reminded CCE that it needed to comply with a number of issues as determined by Department of Education (DOE) staff and following a public hearing during the process of gaining federal recognition. While most were simple procedural issues, there was the one that got all the press. Item 602.13 stated that CCE must improve its communications with stakeholders as it develops its standards and policies. If you recall, in the December hearings there were several speakers opposing CCE's federal recognition. However, Mr. Ochoa determined last week that those opposed were from the same organizations but speaking individually and representing a " minority of the profession " . As a result of his findings, Mr. Ochoa reversed the decision made following the December hearing. A letter to CCE from Mr. Ochoa stated that: " I disagree with NACIQI's concern about lack of wide acceptance of the agency's standards in the field. The dissenting voices in my judgment are a small minority within the profession. Generally, I agree with the arguments presented by the agency in this regard. Accordingly, I am not requiring that CCE address 34 C.F.R. 602.13, or how the agency's standards advance quality in chiropractic education, in its compliance report. " The tone among those who want significant change in CCE changed after they saw the letter from Mr. Ochoa during the meeting. While CCE could have ended discussions at that point they chose not to. In fact, to Chairman Little's credit he encouraged conversation on all topics on the agenda as if he still had to comply legally. In addition, he has agreed to set up multiple stakeholder meetings per year to keep communication with the profession as open as possible. The topics on the meeting's agenda were across the board. They included the election process of CCE's leadership, CCE's governance, subluxation, drugs and surgery, transparency, primary care, etc. CCE was well prepared, and in my view showed that the legitimate issues that were present in the past were not nearly as pressing now. There appeared to be genuine agreement throughout the room to leave the past behind and move forward with ALL segments of the profession as active participants. While we may see different organizations file reports on the meeting in a different light, I firmly believe CCE is doing everything it can to be the best they can be. As I've stated before, CCE is a vital organization to our profession and ACA will do everything it can to help the council when improvement is needed and acknowledge their good work when that is appropriate as well. If you would like a copy of the March 15 letter from DOE to CCE, please let me know. Please keep the family in your thoughts and prayers. We all will miss Ritch so very much. Warmest Regards, Overland, DCPresident, American Chiropractic Association Forward emailThis email was sent to vsaboe@... by memberinfo@... | Update Profile/Email Address | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe™ | Privacy Policy.The American Chiropractic Association | 1701 Clarendon Blvd. | 1701 Clarendon Blvd. | Arlington | VA | 22209