Christine Jordan Sexton
1. While Deputy Secretary for Medicaid Justin Senior isn’t slated to make an appearance at the summit until Day, 2 Associated Industries of Florida is a supporter of the A Healthy Florida Works plan and there are plenty of opportunities for the topic to come up. The Foundation of AIF — the sponsor of the conference — has included a link to the A Healthy Florida Works plan on the summit’s homepage.
2. The summit includes a telemedicine/telehealth discussion led by the always-affable state Sen. Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach. Bean, though, has faced an uphill battle shepherding a bill through the Senate that the business and insurance industries could support. Look to see whether the three-member panel discusses “parity,” which is code for reimbursement. The Florida Medical Association wants to ensure that doctors are paid for telemedicine consults the same as they are for face-to-face consults. Another issue is whether physicians using telemedicine have to be licensed in Florida.
3. Rep. Cary Pigman, R-Avon Park, spearheads a panel that will discuss the challenges of the indirect costs that can increase the costs of health care such as fraud, regulation and “defensive medicine,” which occurs when doctors order tests, procedures or visits or avoid high-risk patients or procedures to reduce exposure to medical liability. Look to see whether the panel discusses the need to address medical malpractice after the Florida Supreme Court decision last year to throw out caps on non-economic damages in wrongful death cases. The court in March rejected the caps — passed in 2003 at the behest of then-Gov. Jeb Bush.
Deputy Secretary for Medicaid Senior will discuss “the new realities of health coverage in Florida.”
The keynote address will be delivered by Eliot Fishman Ph.D., director of the Children and Adults Health Programs Group at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Fishman has worked on “promoting innovation in Medicaid” throughout his career, both in government and in the private sector. Before joining CMS in 2013 Fishman was a principal at Health Management Associates. He also was vice president of Metropolitan Jewish Health System in New York.
The Foundation of AIF was founded in 2008 as an educational arm of AIF, one of the largest business organizations in the state. AIF has supported Medicaid expansion and in 2014 played a key role in developing a proposal to help extend health-care access to nearly 1 million people called A Healthy Florida Works.
Tom Feeney, president and CEO of AIF, described the lineup of speakers as the “a collection of the brightest minds in our industry” and the “innovators who are shaping Florida’s health-care landscape.”
