Hurricane Ida intensified in the last two weeks of August 2021, battering the Cayman Islands and Cuba before hitting the Louisiana coast as a Category 4 storm just before Labor Day weekend.1 At landfall, Ida blasted southern Louisiana with maximum sustained winds of 150 knots, then turned in a north-northwestern direction to hit the New…
Rheumatic Diseases of Childhood: Juvenile Dermatomyositis with Calcinosis Cutis These images depict a 14-year-old boy with a two-year history of proximal muscle weakness affecting both upper and lower limbs, and a skin rash affecting his face. He was diagnosed with juvenile dermatomyositis and developed calcinosis over both legs with skin infection and ulceration. Plain X-ray…
All of us have a professional story to share. We have come from various backgrounds that make us different and allow us to link unique contributions from our professional journey. Some of us dedicate our careers to academics, many serve in private practice, and others have a combination of career experiences. Unfortunately, many of our…
I just didn’t understand. I was an excellent student. I know this is true of most of you. Given the nature of this publication, most of our readership have graduate degrees. This means that collectively, after completing four years of college, we all made the financially dubious decision to pursue post-graduate education, like lemmings jumping…
The ACR and a new Access to Reproductive Health Care Task Force are working to ensure patients with rheumatic disease—particularly women—have access to the medications and treatments they need, including methotrexate, and that rheumatology providers are able to maintain trusting relationships with and advise their patients on all matters relevant to the management of their rheumatic diseases.
Does anyone know why the band Fleetwood Mac might have been an expert in medical communication? Physicians and other medical providers have multiple roles; one obvious task is to provide advice. And for this advice to be valuable, we need to be good listeners; we need to absorb data from multiple sources, which include journals,…
In light of new challenges to individuals’ reproductive rights and the known challenges of clinical management of rheumatic disease patients during pregnancy, we review the current state of reproductive rheumatology and the management of patients with rheumatic disease during pregnancy.
If enacted as is, the proposed CY 2023 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule and Quality Payment Program would make significant cuts to reimbursement for evaluation and management services, creating financial instability for providers. On a positive note, it would extend some telehealth flexibilities 151 days beyond the official end of the public health emergency.
Cigna will not move forward with changes to their reimbursement policy for evaluation and management (E/M) codes submitted with modifier 25 as originally scheduled.
All ACR and ARP members are invited to apply to join colleagues and patients in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 19–20 for advocacy training and meetings with legislators to advocate on priority issues that affect rheumatology providers and patients.