9th Physician-Legal Issues Conference

Program Agenda

8:00 – 8:15 am
Opening Remarks

• Tom Curtis, Curtis Green & Furman, LLP, Pasadena, CA
  Co-Chair, 2008 Physician-Legal Issues Conference

8:15 – 9:15 am
Fraud and Abuse Issues Impacting Physicians
Speaker:

• Keshia Thompson, Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC

9:15 – 10:15 am
With CMS Controlling the Purse Strings, What Is a Doctor to Do?
With significant increases in federal spending, a weakening national economy and a wave of new Medicare beneficiaries anticipated, CMS is under significant pressure to limit any increase in Medicare expenditures. As part of its efforts to achieve this goal, CMS has taken aim and fired at physician reimbursement. This session will discuss some of the mechanisms being used by CMS to limit payments to physicians. Given these new economic realities under Medicare, this session will also provide an overview of the changes proposed in the physician fee schedule, including a discussion of the winners and losers under those changes, outline the new requirements under the Stark laws, and discuss the anti-markup rules, balance billing limitations and Medicare private contracting.
Speaker:

• Catherine M. Greaves, Thompson & Knight LLP, Austin, TX

10:15 – 10:30 am Break

10:30 – 11:30 am
Physician Joint Ventures: Here Today-Gone Tomorrow?
Panelists will cover an examination of the continuing viability of physician ventures such as physician hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, underarrangements, diagnostive and other ancillary enterprises. These options for the enhancement of physician revenue are also under attack. This session will evaluate the present state of these ventures as well as the possible future for this source of physician revenue.
Speakers:

• Diane T. Carter, Brown McCarroll, LLP, Austin, TX
• William T. Mathias, Ober Kaler Grimes & Schriver, PC, Baltimore, MD

11:30 am –12:30 pm
Physician Employment and Alternative Practice Strategies
In response to growing economic, legal, insurance and regulatory pressures, physicians are increasingly turning to employment and alternative practice strategies. Within community hospitals, salaried hospitalists and wholly-owned specialties are creating quality, governance, confidentiality, coverage and other issues for medical staff organizations. Outside of hospitals physicians are exploring alternative practice strategies, such as concierge medicine, opting out of insurance, providing only non-covered services, managed practice models, and selling health care products. This session explores the legal, regulatory, and ethical issues raised by these various physician and hospital “coping” strategies.
Speakers:

• Robert M. Portman, Powers Pyles Sutter & Verville PC, Washington, DC
• Elizabeth A. Snelson, Legal Counsel for the Medical Staff, St. Paul, Minnesota

12:30 – 2:00 pm
Luncheon Address: Responding to Unfair Payor Practices
This session will feature an update on multi-district litigation settlements, the United Healthcare regulatory settlement, New York Attorney General Cuomo's initiatives and recent state legislative efforts.
Speaker:
Catherine Hanson, American Medical Association, Chicago, IL

2:00 – 3:00 pm
Physicians at Work: Models of the Past, Present & Future
With changes in the marketplace, patient demands, hospital and payor business goals, and physician objectives (both professional and personal), the models of physician practice are changing. This session will highlight the traditional models of physician practice, discuss current and changing models of practice, and analyze some future models of practice. These models include managed care contracting entities, such as IPAs, employment models, such as single and multi-specialty practices and “umbrella” entities, provider based entities, clinic models, foundation models, and retail medicine operations, just to name a few.
Speaker:

• Sidney Summers Welch, Arnall Golden Gregory LLP, Atlanta, GA

3:00 – 3:15 pm Break

3:15 – 4:15 pm
Is There a Future for Physicians?
This panel discussion will use the previous sessions as a foundation to discuss the future of physician medical practice. What will be the common structures? What types of services will be performed? Who will be paying physicians? What does that mean for the patient and the healthcare system?
Moderator:

• William E. Hopkins, Brown McCarroll, LLP, Austin, TX

Speakers:

• Almeta E. Cooper, Ohio State Medical Association, Hilliard, OH
• David W. Hilgers, Brown McCarroll, LLP, Austin, TX

4:15 pm Adjourn