Minutes from legislative teleconference 12/12/07 @7:00 PM

Present:Roberta Damren-Chair; Dimsie Clark, Maria Sirois

Goals of committee:
Short-term goals:
Inform members of MeADE of pending and current national and state legislative issues affecting our patients with diabetes and our practice
Encourage members to support legislation as recommended by ADA and AADE
These two goals are being met by alerts sent to members when the need to take action arises
Long term goal:
Increase visibility (to those who make State legislative decisions)of the educational and medical needs of patients with diabetes and the services diabetes educators provide.
We need to think about what we wish to do in the future ie Visits to State Capitol etc. Before we can be more aggressive about this, we need to have ALL members on-board with this. We would need to have a line item budget for any luncheons etc. that we plan and plenty of members and also people with diabetes who want to participate. If Legislation arises that affects our patients, the legislature needs to see the face of someone with diabetes

Current Legislative issues:
Negotiations reauthorizing State Childrens Health Insurance Stalled. Bill was vetoed by President. A revised bill has been sent to President

Other bills in Committee:
ADA Restoration ACT
Special Diabetes Funding programs
Diabetes Screening and Medicaid Savings ACT
Diabetes Treatment and prevention ACT

Alerts sent to members in regards to these issues. Members are encouraged to go to our websit e and access the particulars.

Other:
HR 4218 calls for the immediate recognition of CDEs as providers by CMS. The committee discussed if this would enable more medical providers (ie NPs who were CDEs)to get reimbursement for providing diabetes education. It was thought that much of this would boil down to how the legislation was written and interpreted in the Federal Register, if approved. We need to stay on top of this legislation.
Committee members discussed that diabetes education is sometimes provided in the MDs or NP office with a referral to Dietitian and Nurse instead of receiving the full diabetes education program. This had come up at a regional meeting. This may be beyond the scope of this committee but we will try to get more information about this and see what the real issue was. MDs and NP can provide office visits and bill for these under office codes.

Committee adjoined at 7:50 PM.

Next teleconference: March 12 at 7:00 PM

Roberta Damren RD, CDE