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Our aggressive Advocacy is all about Leadership – In Defining Your ASC Future. Since our founding, OOSS has assumed the exclusive role of representing the national interests of ophthalmic led ASCs and the patients you serve. OOSS is heavily involved in Federal and state advocacy and through your support we have are achieving significant victories. In the coming year, the powerful combination of legislation and market conditions will affect your ASC opportunities in ways never seen before! We are Your Society for Leadership and Advocacy.
Washington Update Online
OOSS and AAASC Team Up for Grassroots Advocacy
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The State Advocacy and Grassroots Advocacy program was developed in cooperation with the American Association Ambulatory Surgery Centers (AAASC). We have focused on three specific short term goals to meet the expectations of OOSS members.
Grassroots Advocacy: Developing a grassroots advocacy system that will support all ASC efforts at the federal and state level. OOSS’ Washington Counsel, Michael Romansky, just in the last year has developed and expanded an ASC industry political action committee to raise funds for the election of federal candidates to the Senate and House of Representatives - ASCPAC. In addition, the OOSS Board of Directors have voted to underwrite support for another tool developed by AAASC to monitor the entire ASC industry more efficiently and to effectively manage grassroots support for federal or state issues. AAASC has developed a website that will be available from the OOSS website later this month – Ambulatory Surgery Center Advocacy Center provides anyone in the ASC industry with the capability to accomplish three important grassroots goals:
Look up information about your state or federal elected officials including their complete biography, office addresses, phone numbers, key staff, email and fax. Take action to communicate with your elected official directly from the website by simply clicking on the issue you are interested in and entering your zip code so you will be matched with your elected official. This fully automated process will allow you to customize your own communication (letter, email ,fax, phone call) using template information that will guide you.
Access to additional resources that support your understanding and knowledge about the federal or state issues.
The Ambulatory Surgery Center Advocacy Center website is produced by the American Association of Ambulatory Surgery Centers to support unified ASC industry advocacy with Congress and in each State legislature.
Monitoring Legislation in All States. Through focused conversations with state association leaders, ASC Corporate leaders and allied national associations with an ASC interest, AAASC and OOSS identified the need to better organize our industry efforts to recognize and track state legislation. AAASC has developed a system available to OOSS that will accomplish three goals:
Identify and report the introduction and movement of any state legislation in the following topic areas:
- Data Reporting: Many states already require ASCs to submit data to the state, and more states in the last year have expanded or revised the information they collect from ASCs. The data reporting may be as simple as adverse events or as complicated as all data from a HCFA 1500. In some cases the hospital or insurance sectors are looking for more detailed ASC information for competitive reasons or state health departments because of the increased volume of procedures done in ASCs.
- Certificate of Need (CON): Many states introduce legislation on CON to restrict or expand the ability of ASCs to operate. CON refers to the requirements the state may impose before an ASC is permitted to build or expand a Center.
- Charity Tax: As state legislators search for new ways to generate revenue, taxes on ASCs, or more often specifically. cosmetic surgery, are frequently introduced. Sometimes the justification is that the extra revenue will be used to fund hospital charity patients.
- Worker’s Compensation: More states are beginning to look at the rates they approve for worker’s compensation cases. Often state legislation that provides a general restructuring of the state worker’s compensation rules is introduced with possible consequences to ASCs.
- Out of Network and balance billing: The trend toward “consumer directed health insurance” has caused some states to look at their treatment of out of network providers and the rules that govern balance billing. In some cases the hospital or insurance sectors are interested in these laws to curtail or reduce the ability of ASCs to meet patient demand for their services.
- Physician Ownership: A few states have introduced legislation that is intended to prohibit or curtail physician ownership and investment in an ASC often at the request of state hospital associations.
- Proactive Legislation: We have included this category because more state ASC associations are taking a proactive stand in their state legislature to use the legislative process to enhance their agenda as opposed to having to react to threatening legislation. A variety of ideas for positive ASC legislation may be found in this category.
Communicate the status of state legislation in these priority areas to state associations, Corporate ASC, and allied national associations with the understanding that the state ASC association is the lead organization to decide what action if any to take on any identified legislation (and of course to utilize the Ambulatory Surgery Center Advocacy Center for grassroots action).
Provide a matrix of ASC state issues that have come up in the last two years as a tool to anticipate possible state activity in 2006 and to make this Matrix available through the AAASC website as a resource and search tool for the ASC industry. Users will have the ability to search by state and by specific topic.
Resource Library: Create a Resource Library available through the website consisting of documents related to ASC issues in the states. The Resource Library is important in that it provides one more avenue for collaboration within the ASC community. In addition to copies of legislation as described in the previous section the resource library will also have position statements, and other research documents related to key ASC issues. State associations will then have a readily available source of support as the experience of one state will be available to others.
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OOSS Advocacy Center
