The TAKE BACK MEDICINE NETWORK consists of TAFP members, your families, your staff, their families and all members of the health care team, speaking in one voice to return the focus of the health care delivery system to the needs of the patients. Through a communications network involving e-mail, phone, and fax we can collect and disseminate information and facilitate quick responses on both local and state levels whenever our right to deliver appropriate care or operate our practices is challenged.

We will share this information with our elected officials, and business and community leaders. When it’s time to create a groundswell of support on an issue, we will use the TBM Network to make things happen. Together we can eliminate the waste of precious manpower and resources on unnecessary administration and oversight, which interferes with the efficient and effective delivery of health care.

We will chronicle issues and efforts that contribute to our ultimate goal. We urge you to keep TAFP staff informed, and to help facilitate this, we are introducing a new feature on our Web site. Just click on the TBM Network link on the TAFP home page, www.tafp.org. Here you can post news and events affecting your practice and your patients as well as specific problems you experience. The academy can gather these comments and stories and get the message to business and community leaders. We will also use this as a message board for news briefs, like the one below. By banding together and sharing our stories and resources, we can make a change for the better in the state’s health care delivery system.

TAFP comments on prompt pay rules

In light of Governor Rick Perry’s veto of House Bill 1862—the Prompt Pay/ Fair Pay bill—the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) released revised prompt pay rules in an attempt to strengthen existing rules. TAFP in coordination with the Texas Pediatric Society and the Texas Academy of Internal Medicine submitted comments on the proposed amendments.

A copy of the letter TAFP sent to TDI is posted on the academy Web site for you to review. Though the rules were a good first step, problems remain. The ability to have the late payment penalties, the contract amendment notice periods and the implementation periods altered by a mutual agreement in the contract remain. These clauses can be reduced and incorporated into contracts with individual physicians and small groups, which they must sign as written or decline to participate. These penalties and notice periods must be mandatory under the statues. In addition, nothing in these rules addresses delays caused by unnecessary coordination of benefits.

Patients that are disturbed by notices that their physicians have not received payment by their insurance companies need to understand that this is a direct result of ineffective prompt pay rules.

We want to hear from YOU! TBM Network needs to know what is adversely affecting your practice and your patients

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