Proposed revisions to the American Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics would remove language that supports direct billing and condemns clinicians who charge markups for laboratory or pathology services. The changes could weaken efforts to rein in billing practices that CAP leaders argue are not in the best interest of the patient and that the AMA currently defines as unethical.

“The importance of this is that many states utilize the AMA’s code of ethics as their code of ethics for things related to medicine. . . . So, if you change the AMA code of ethics that these laws are based on, then people can make the argument that since these ethics principles have changed, perhaps these laws need to be changed,” Daniel C. Zedek, MD, tells CAP TODAY. He is an alternate delegate to the AMA House of Delegates for the CAP and is director of dermatopathology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

My latest in CAP TODAY’s Put it On the Board section. Read the whole shebang.

Before the Affordable Care Act was passed, and before the notion of an ACO became a Medicare reality, Richard J. Cote, MD, was among those in medicine who saw the writing on the wall regarding health care payment.

Dr. Cote recalls his thinking as he joined the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in 2009 to become chair of its Department of Pathology.

“President Obama had just been elected. There was a great push for creating a comprehensive health care system across the country to insure uninsured people,” Dr. Cote tells CAP TODAY. “What was very clear to me, even before the ACA came into being, was that this push was going to accelerate the at-risk model of reimbursement and that there was also going to be very much a downward pressure on reimbursement for all medical services, including pathology, which we’ve clearly seen take place. And there was going to be a move to better coordinated management of care.”

Dr. Cote and his laboratory colleagues at UM are preparing for this transition away from the traditional, and still predominant, fee-for-service payment model. They say the health-system–owned laboratory must move beyond its established role to show how it will help cut costs while improving care and outcomes.

My latest feature article in CAP TODAY. Read the whole shebang.