Current and past Minnesota ACEP legislative initiatives include:

--Supported legislation passed by the House and Senate to stop a scheduled 4.4 percent cut to physician Medicare payments.

• Lobbying for legislative action to correct the flawed formula used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to set physician Medicare payment rates

--Led the successful effort to overturn a CMS directive allowing states to limit the number of ED visits made by Medicaid recipients.

• Informed media of CMS action and its consequences
• Provided information to Senate leaders
• Brought together a coalition of hospital and physician groups to lobby against directive

--Continuing to work for medical liability reform

• ACEP Board members agreed not to provide expert witness testimony
• Promoting ACEP policy on expert witness qualifications

--Continue to work for solutions to the overcrowding crisis

• Developing policy paper with Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare organizations
• Co-sponsoring symposium with JCAHO seeking solutions
• Issued joint advisory with the American Hospital Association detailing immediate strategies to help ease overcrowding
• Initiated series of meetings in Washington, DC with The Joint Commission, AMA, and the American Public Health Association to develop strategies
• Successful lobbying effort  to insure auto no fault remains a payer of EM services in MN
• Successful lobbying effort to keep the MN Trauma System intact

--Representing emergency medicine on Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) task force that is developing a new methodology to eliminate the need for documentation guidelines.