HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Thursday, July 30, provided the down payment for a nationwide effort to reduce health care associated infections in stand-alone or same-day surgical centers. The first effort will begin later this month in 12 states under provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

“Keeping patients healthy is one of the requirements of the Recovery Act, and the first 12 states that have volunteered to focus attention on these surgical centers are taking a giant step in helping to reduce infections that affect millions of patients every year,” said Secretary Sebelius. “CMS’s efforts with states to reduce the number of infections quickly are just one part of protecting the health of the nation’s health care system.”

Increasingly, health care delivery is being shifted to outpatient settings such as ambulatory care facilities, long term care facilities, and free standing specialty care sites. The number of ambulatory surgical centers has grown dramatically and continues to increase. ASCs account for 43 percent of all same-day surgery in the United States, amounting to about 15 million procedures every year.

Read more about HHS' action plan to prevent health care associated infections here.

After receiving a letter from AAPA EVP/CEO Bill Leinweber, the American Medical Association issued a correction to an American Medical News article that contained innacurate information about PA scope-of-practice expansions.

From AAPA's monthly state government newsletter Legislative Watch:

American Medical News Gets it Wrong

The January 18th edition of American Medical News printed an article entitled, "Organized Medicine Pushes Back on Expansions of Scope of Practice."

The article included this information box:

"Nonphysician heath professionals continued to turn to state legislatures for scope-of-practice expansions in 2009. Below is a sampling of bills that passed.

Prescriptive authority/drug administration
By: Nurses, naturopaths, physician assistants, optometrists, pharmacists
States: Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma

Independent practice
By: Nurses, physician assistants
States: Hawaii, Illinois, Washington"

On January 19th AAPA EVP/CEO Bill Leinweber sent a letter to the AMA executive director noting the complete inaccuracy of the independent practice designation and the fact that the Illinois prescribing bill allows Schedule II prescribing by PAs only if delegated by a supervising physician. The bill had the support of the Illinois State Medical Association.
The offending language was removed from the AM News Web site on January 20th and a correction was posted on the 21st. The correction will also appear in the print version of AM News.