You would get a five-year vacation from the massive Medicare pay cuts called for by the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula -- if AMA President Cecil B. Wilson had his way. In his testimony before Congress, Wilson calls for a "three-pronged approach" to reforming Medicare's physician payment system. It starts with a permanent repeal of SGR, a five-year period of "stable payment updates that keep pace with the growth in medical practice costs" and a transition to new payment models.

CMS walked through electronic health record (EHR) attestation in a conference call Tuesday, easing some provider concerns.

CMS released the online EHR attestation system in late April and instructed providers step-by-step on how to use the system during the conference call.  There have been over 35,000 eligible attestations so far this year, CMS said. But the brevity of the instructional part of the call was offset by the volume of questions providers still had about the process. Here are some points CMS made clearer during the call: 

President Obama faces opposition from both Republicans and Democrats on the Independent Physicians Advisory Board (IPAB) -- the most potent cost-cutting tool in the health reform law. Remember: The IPAB, which would be composed of physicians, would have the power to set Medicare payments for services based on comparative effectiveness research. The IPAB would, for example, be able to have Medicare pay less for procedures that are shown to be less effective. 

The Obama Administration is pushing for a mandatory training requirement for doctors prescribing narcotics in an effort to curb the nation’s prescription painkillers epidemic.

CMS's push for you and your peers to adopt electronic health record (EHR) systems by 2016 has a passionate advocate in Administrator Donald Berwick, MD, a former pediatrician appointed by the Obama administration. Dr. Berwick, who is generally well regarded in the physician community, appears in a four-minute YouTube video released last week to make a personal case for EHR adoption. Dr. Berwick describes the benefits of an EHR from his clinical perspective, and tells an interesting anecdote of treating an autistic native American child in a remote reservation.