Letter from the President – April 2019

Fellow ACC Colleagues,

It appears the snow is melting and that spring may finally be upon us, but within the New York ACC Chapter, things have been heating up for quite a while! Having recently returned from the national ACC conference in New Orleans, I am once again rejuvenated with all the activities that NYACC and national ACC have ongoing.

The conference was terrific, with great scientific presentations and networking opportunities, however I think the New York Chapter stole the show this year with our parade in the French Quarter. For those who couldn’t attend, you may be aware that we strive to host a reception at the national ACC meetings each year for state Chapter attendees. Being that we were in New Orleans this year, we decided to raise the bar a bit, and we were able to obtain our own parade license from the city of New Orleans, commandeered a local brass band and Grand Marshal and we had our own police escort for a second line parade through the streets of the French Quarter.

The event was a huge success and we even had some ACC representation from other states who temporarily applied for NY membership to participate! We have photos of the event on our website and social media accounts, so definitely take a look if you have a chance, and be sure to mark your calendars for ACC.20 in Chicago next year to see what we try to come up with to top this experience…..it’ll be a challenge to say the least!

Within the Chapter we said goodbye to some old friends who have served us well as Board members on the NY ACC Council the last few years and recently welcomed a new crop of Councilors who are eager to get started in representing your interests and helping make the New York Chapter the local professional home for all of the Cardiovascular Team.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our departing Councilors and welcome our new members to the team.

Departing Councilors	Incoming Councilors
Dr. Stanley Fernandez	Dr. Joshua Schulman-Marcus
Dr. Charles Lowenstein	Dr. Farbod Raiszadeh
Dr. Amgad Makaryus	Dr. Jason Pacos
Dr. Robert Phang	Dr. John Makaryus
Dr. Benjamin Schaefer	Dr. Ayman Iskander
Dr. Michael Sassower	Dr. Jennifer Lang

Along with seeing old and new faces, our Chapter was once again recognized for all of the good work we have been doing over the last year. At the Board of Governors meeting at ACC.19, our Chapter received the award for work towards improving diversity and inclusion amongst the Chapter and helping to foster a pipeline for diversity entering the field of Cardiology and for creating representation at a state and national level. Through the work of the NYACC Council, led by our Diversity and Inclusion Task Force Chair, Dr. Robert Roswell, we have laid a foundation on which we intend to keep building to foster greater opportunity for involvement within the Chapter and the field of Cardiology.

In addition, NYACC received an Innovation Award, in partnership with the California Chapter of ACC and the Innovation Section of ACC, to create Innovation Hubs at our Chapter meetings. With this award, we have announced our first offering, which is the Inaugural New York ACC Shark Tank Competition to be held in Riverhead, NY in concert with our NYACC Annual Scientific Session on August 2nd and 3rd of this year.

We have had 20+ applications for groups wanting to compete to demonstrate their innovations to the practice of Cardiology in front of a group of judges that will be comprised of ACC Leadership, business leaders and venture capital investors. To make this even more exciting, as we have already scheduled our Scientific Session to be held at the Long Island Aquarium in Riverhead, we will be holding the Shark Tank competition in the Shark Tank room with a wall of sharks swimming in the background as we hear from our competitors! Once again, NYACC does nothing half way!!

While there are many things for us all to be proud of that have occurred over the last year, we have heard from many that provider wellness and burnout remain huge issues that face us all. The ACC and Chapter, while not able to solve all the problems we face, have committed to doing their part to improve the practice of Cardiology for us all. To this end, we are announcing two initiatives that we will be pursuing in the months ahead:

• Prior Authorization relief: We’ve heard loud and clear that members and their practices are inundated with prior authorization requirements and concerned that these administrative burdens are interfering with their ability to appropriately care for patients. We have had conversations with state and national legislators on this topic and even had some success in pockets with discussions with insurance companies and regulators, but we think we can do more.As announced previously, the ACC has released the Prior Authorization Reporting Tool (PARTool), which is an online tool that takes about 2 minutes to complete. It tracks what procedures are requiring prior authorizations, the outcome of the request and the payers and approvers who are involved. While a small additional step in the process, we are asking all New York members to join together in the month of May and have your administrative staff enter all prior authorizations for your office.With this one month of data, we believe we will have enough data to make our case at the state and national levels to reverse this trend, but we can’t do it without you. Please join us in this important effort. The website for the PARTool is: https://www.acc.org/partool. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly or your Councilor from your region, but together we can make a difference!
• Maintenance of Certification struggles: As I announced previously, the ACC has worked with both the ABIM and the NBPAS to create options for members seeking alternatives to the high stakes 10-year recertification exam and MOC requirements. The national ACC announced at ACC.19 an agreement with ABIM to allow a Continuing Maintenance Pathway that will be allowed in lieu of the 10-year recertification exam.With this process, we now can complete one of five ACCSAP modules per year for 5 years and answer 60 questions from that module in a timed exam with successful completion resulting in maintenance of ABIM certification without needing to take the 10-year exam. While admittedly not free, this program requires purchase of the ACCSAP program which is $1,500 to provide 5 years’ worth of modules ($300 per year) plus $128 fee each year to ABIM for those who wish to maintain their board certification status.For those who do not need ABIM status and wish to use NBPAS or any other credentialing, they can use ACCSAP or any of the other low/no-cost CME options that the College provides to demonstrate ongoing continuing education.

While this is an improvement, I’ve heard loud and clear that there is more work to be done, and I agree. Thus the New York Chapter of the ACC has taken it on as an advocacy effort to lobby our legislators at State and national levels to help remove the costly burdens that continuous education and Board certification place on the profession of Medicine. I encourage you to join with us for lobbying days and the Legislative Conference to ensure our voices are heard as we work to remove the costly burdens that MOC have placed on us without any clear evidence of improved care delivery for the patients we serve. This will not be an easy process, but the tides are in our favor, and again, together we can make a difference.

Finally, I want to spotlight our upcoming offerings for 2019. We have our ever-popular Cardiovascular Team Conference which will be moving back to Manhattan this year at the Wells Fargo Conference Center on Friday June 7, 2019. We have a terrific line-up of speakers planned and our special guest, Tim Atteberry, CEO of the national ACC who will be attending, followed by the well-received Summer Soiree to follow immediately after the conference. Hope to see you in Manhattan for that! Next, combine Cardiologists, The Hamptons and summer and what do you get? New York ACC Scientific Session 2019 of course!! As noted above we will have our Inaugural Shark Tank Competition, Fellows Jeopardy and Scientific Session all occurring in Riverhead, NY, on Friday and Saturday, August 2-3, 2019. This will be one you don’t want to miss!

That’s all for now, but please reach out with questions or issues, join a committee, group or task force within the Chapter and/or attend one of our educational conferences! I would love to meet and talk with as many of you as possible to ensure the NYACC is representing your needs and interests!

With warm regards,

J. Chad Teeters, MD, FACC
Upstate Governor | President
New York ACC