April 6, 2009
 

 
SCt Petition Update
  

Current status on the Texas Supreme Court petition and the TOA/TMA vs. TSBPME case. Susan Henricks, Attorney at Law with Hull Henricks & MacRae received the reports by the TSBPME and TPMA last week. They have reported that

1.  The Board has not voted to repeal the disputed rule.
2.  The Board will not meet again until July 6, 2009.
3.  The Board has referred the rule revision issue to its Rules Committee
     for further review and revision

TPMA says it can file its brief on April 23 or is "ready to delay the briefing schedule to await possible Board action." The TSBPME concurs and proposes filing its brief April 29.

We are preparing a response pointing out that further action on the proposed rule revision is speculative at this point and it is unlikely that any revision would be effective before September or October 2009 at the earliest, because the substantive revisions approved at the Board meeting compel re-publication for notice and comment. Consider that almost four months have passed since the Board proposed the revision in December. Four months from July 6 would be November 2009. We will urge that the Petitioners should be required to file their briefs and pursue their request for review without further delay, especially considering that the delay to date is a circumstance of the Board’s own making, over which we have no control, and the 3rd Court of Appeals opinion was issued 12 months ago.

We will ask for 30 days from the filing of the last brief as we expect to have 3 briefs to respond to, again.

 

To view the letter that was drafted and served in the Supreme Court proceeding on Friday April 3, 2009, please click here.

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Predicted: Joint Replacements Will Soar and Number of Orthopaedists Will Decline
     

At the 2009 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons annual meeting in Las Vegas, two new studies revealed that more people are lining up for hip and knee replacements, and the number of surgeons who do them is decreasing.

One study predicts that in 2016, nearly 200,000 patients who require hip replacement and 750,000 patients who require knee replacement will not

be able to have their surgery performed because there will not be enough orthopedic surgeons available to do the procedure.

The research looked at the retirement age of doctors performing hip and knee replacements and the number of new doctors entering the field. Using this data, the researchers calculated the number of doctors who will be available to perform these procedures in 2016. They found that by 2016, there will be fewer doctors available to replace those who retire. The study said that by 2016, 46 percent of patients needing hip replacements will not get them, and 72 percent of those needing knee replacements will have to wait. Low insurance reimbursements for these procedures appear to be keeping new doctors from choosing this specialty. Reimbursement for joint replacement has decreased 60 percent in inflation adjusted dollars since 1990. Residents in training may take this into consideration when selecting a career and unless things change, this could lead to excessive waiting times for our senior citizens requiring joint replacement.

Another study made by an engineering and scientific consulting firm found the dramatic increase in the demand for joint replacements is largely driven by younger patients. The researchers found that by 2011, more than 50 percent of patients needing hip replacement will be under 65, and that by 2016, more than half of those needing knee replacement will be also be under 65. Many patients needing knee replacement are between 45 and 54. In 2006, there were 59,077 people in this age group having knee replacements, but by 2030, that number is predicted to increase 17 times to almost 1 million.

It is thought that this trend is driven by the success of these procedures as well as by people being more active and also obesity, which can trigger arthritis at an earlier age. As the population ages, there will be a need for joint replacement in many more older people. The average joint replacement lasts 20 years, so as more younger people are having joint replacement surgery, the need for surgery to replace replacements will also grow. This increase in revision procedures means the time factor and expense of the procedures...which can be two to three times the cost of the primary implant and possibly two to three times the surgeons time of the primary implant. However, reimbursement rates for revisions may only pay 20 percent more.

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This Week In Texas: Mignon McGarry Memos

By Mignon McGarry
TOA Legislative Advocate
TOA Online Version: All Memos

 

April 2, 2009, Thursday

Yesterday, the Texas Senate approved Senate Bill 1, a budget for the next two years that could total $182.2 billion. The vote was 26 to five,

with Senators Wendy Davis (D-Ft. Worth), Rodney Ellis (D-Houston), Mario Gallegos (D-Houston), Eliot Shapleigh (D-El Paso), and Kirk Watson (D-Austin) voting No. The budget represents a 7.3 percent increase over the current two-year budget. At this point, the budget would not dip into the state savings account known as the rainy day fund, which takes a super-majority of lawmakers to spend. The budget relies on nearly $11 billion in federal stimulus money, but about half of that substitutes for state money that otherwise would be needed in several areas. Senate Bill 1 now moves to the Texas House where it is scheduled to be debated on the House floor the week after Easter. The budget is expected to run into some resistance in the House due to the spending of federal stimulus funds. Conservative members of the House feel that the spending creates too much national debt and will leave Texas on the hook for funding new programs in the future, once the stimulus money has been spent.

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas has its first executive director. William "Bill" Gimson has been selected the institute’s oversight committee. Gimson retired in January as chief operating officer of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he spent 35 years. There, he oversaw more than 15,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $10 billion, according to the Texas institute. The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute was created to oversee the $3 billion in bonds approved by voters in 2007 for cancer research and prevention. These funds will be distributed in the form of grants to public and private educational institutions and medical research facilities in Texas.
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TMLT To Award Four $10,000 Scholarships
 

By Donald Chow
Senior Vice President, Marketing

As our partner in the medical community, I wanted to share some important information with you about TMLT's scholarship program.
As we have in years past, TMLT will be awarding medical student scholarships to Texas medical students in 2009. However, we have made some important changes to the program.

For 2009, we will award four $10,000 scholarships and we have opened up eligibility for the scholarship to second, third, and fourth-year medical students. (Previously, we awarded eight $5,000 scholarships and eligibility was restricted to third- and fourth-year students.) We have implemented these changes in order to increase participation in the scholarhip program.

The TMLT Memorial Scholarships were created to recognize students who are interested in finding creative ways to enhance patient safety. Applicants are asked to communicate their ideas about patient safety in a short essay. Scholarship recipients are chosen based on the written essay and financial need.

The TMLT Memorial Scholarship program began in 2005, and since that time $150,000 has been given to 30 Texas medical students.

If you wish to promote the TMLT Memorial Scholarship to your student members and need materials, please contact William Malamon at 800-580-8658 ext. 5898 or send an email to william-malamon@tmlt.org. You can also direct students to the scholarship information on the TMLT web site by clicking here.
 
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