“ISASS’ advocacy action takes many forms across multiple forums, but at the most basic level, our number one goal is to support spine surgeons and spine patients,” Dr. Lorio said. “We do this through education – educating our members on the most pressing issues facing our practice, educating regulators on the
impact of regulations on the surgeon and patient relationship and educating payers with the most up to date literature on surgical spine procedures and technologies.”
Here are five advocacy projects ISASS participated in.
1. Advocating for Anthem Blue Shield to retract coding edits bundling additional-level posterior and posterolateral fusions with the first-level procedure.
2. Influencing CMS and the National Correct Coding Initiative to retract planned coding edits to bundle anterior instrumentation codes 22845 through 22847 with 22859.
3. Through the group’s research, CMS flagged CPT code 27279 as potentially misvalued and asked the Relative Value Scale Committee to reevaluate the code.
4. ISASS issued a policy statement on decompression with interlaminar stabilization to be used by the society, surgeons and patients to inform payer coverage policies.
5. ISASS joined Blue Cross Blue Shield Association’s Evidence Street Program to provide valuable feedback on the association’s health technology assessments.
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