The Salishan 2007 brochure will be arriving via the postal service very soon; however, you can download the form now as a PDF file and register early for this meeting.

Your ASA Director, Dick Johnston, has submitted a report on the issues addressed at this month's ASA Board of Director's Meeting. The information is only available to members and will require a login to view. If you are not logged-in, use the log-in box in the column on the left.

OSA Immediate Past-President Angela Kendrick has quietly but effectively represented our specialty on the Oregon Medicare Carrier Advisory Committee. Read on to learn about the happenings at the most recent meeting of this group.

It's time to mark your calendars for the 2007 Salishan Spring OSA meeting, which will be held May 19 and 20. OSA President-elect Chris Swide has put together a terrific faculty for this event, and, as always, we will make sure that there will be some great social activities as well.

Congressional legislation in December authorized the Medicare program to begin paying physicians for improving quality of care. This is in addition to the payments for usual services provided Medicare beneficiaries. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently created a new web page describing the status of this program. Beginning in July 2007, physicians who participate and meet the criteria will be able to earn up to an additional 1.5% of allowed charges. To track the development of this program or to simply learn more, please visit http://www.cms.hhs.gov/PQRI/.

Every year, Portland Monthly Magazine publishes the results of a survey of Portland area physicians to determine the top physicians in each specialty. This year the magazine recognized the following anesthesiologists for their excellence:

Anesthesiology
• Steven Bunnage, Providence Portland Medical Center
• Grace Chien, Portland VA Medical Center
• Jeffrey Kirsch, OHSU
• Valerie Sera, OHSU
• Christopher Swide, OHSU

Pediatric Anesthesiology
• Angela Kendrick, OHSU-Doernbecher Children's Hospital
• Jeffrey Koh, OHSU-Doernbecher Children's Hospital
• Kirk Lalwani, OHSU-Doernbecher Children's Hospital

Critical Care
• Michael Hutchens, OHSU

Congratulations to all these anesthesiologists for earning this recognition from their peers.

The Oregon Board of Medical Examiners requires that all licensed physicians complete 6 hours of continuing medical education in pain management or end of life care during the period January 1, 2001 and January 2, 2009. In addition to the 6 hours, physicians must complete a mandatory 1 hour online CME program at www.oregonpain.org.

The Oregon Society's spring and fall educational and business meetings have had many sessions since 2000 that have focused on acute and chronic pain management. Those who have attended these lectures may have met most if not all of the state's requirements, other than the online course. In fact, those who attended both the spring and fall 2006 meetings easily met the 6 hour minimum.

As a service to our members, we are posting a pdf file prepared by Sondra Gleason listing all these educational sessions and the credit hours assigned since January 2000. Please download this file, identify the sessions that you have attended related to pain management, total the hours and keep this as a record documenting your completion of this CME requirement.

For further details, please visit the OBME website at http://www.oregon.gov/BME/CMEFAQs.shtml.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a new notice of proposed rule making in the November 27, 2006 Federal Register that will allow anesthesia carts to remain unlocked in secured areas. ASA has been fighting for this change for a number of years on the grounds that requiring carts to be locked potentially puts patients at risk. To learn more, please see this article on the ASA website.

OSA Fall Meeting 2006 Sets New Attendance Record

Over sixty anesthesiologists from Oregon and neighboring states attended the just completed Fall Meeting in Eugene. Joseph Tobin, M.D. from the Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston Salem, North Carolina and Vincent Chan, M.D. from the University of Toronto in Canada were the featured guest faculty. In addition to an excellent didactic program and a business meeting, the OSA hosted a hand's on workshop on ultrasound guided nerve blocks.

The 2006 American Society of Anesthesiologists Annual Meeting to be held in Chicago will be here in just a few short weeks. All ASA members should have received information about registration, refresher courses, social activities and the many other aspects that make this such a great meeting. For those Oregon anesthesiologists who will be attending and have an interest in ASA governance, you may wish to attend regional caucus meetings, House of Delegates sessions or the House of Delegates reference committees. Any ASA member can testify about any issue coming before the House of Delegates during reference committee hearings.