United Rheumatology meeting 'opens the conversation' between rheumatologists, payers
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
The United Rheumatology Spring National Meeting will offer attendees lectures on cutting edge topics such as genomics and transcriptomics in addition to a range of continuing medical education activities. But the real appeal of United Rheumatology, and of the meeting, will be the guidance that can be provided to independent rheumatologists regarding practice management strategies and interacting with payers.
Although the meeting was originally scheduled to be held Apr. 17-19 at the Marriott Napa Valley, in California, the escalating travel and safety concerns related to the COVID-19 outbreak led United Rheumatology leadership to cancel their in-person meeting in favor of a series of webinars for the same dates.
“There are several purposes for this meeting, the most important of which is that we provide an opportunity for current and prospective members of United Rheumatology to learn about what we do,” Max I. Hamburger, MD, founder and executive chairman of United Rheumatology and managing partner at Rheumatology Associates of Long Island, told Healio Rheumatology. “We have a 2-hour, small-group session in the afternoon where we address current, near-term and long-term plans.”
Session topics are “fluid,” according to Hamburger, and reflect the needs and knowledge gaps expressed by United Rheumatology members. “There might be a session on payer engagement, or office management services, alternate payment arrangements, revenue cycle management,” he said.
United Rheumatology will also offer a new service called “landing pads” to help doctors get their feet on the ground after leaving large academic institutions for independent practice. “This was recommended to us by a member at one of our meetings, and we thought it would be an incredibly useful topic for discussion,” Hamburger said.
Similarly, the meeting will cover the rescue services that United Rheumatology can provide. “The majority of independent practices have groups of three rheumatologists or less,” he said. “A small practice like that will not have a great depth of staff. If you lose a physician or a staff member to illness or to another practice, you have a significant workflow compromise. We can parachute an administrative staff member in to stabilize the situation until the practice can find a replacement or the sick person returns. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn about these programs.”
The second silo of the meeting Hamburger discussed pertains to CME activities. “These sessions will obviously tilt toward the clinical side,” he said.
Sessions on novel classes of therapeutics or diagnostics will be held throughout the day. But beyond the content of the talks, Hamburger offered another attractive component of this particular meeting. “Some of the larger educational meetings will have 30 or 40 CME sessions happening simultaneously, so attendees end up rushing from room to room, and still do not have the opportunity to see all the sessions they would like to,” he said. “We identify high importance and high interest topics to rheumatologists, and the setup of our meeting is such that everyone can attend.”
For Hamburger, the third silo offered by the meeting represents the truly unique component of United Rheumatology. “We engage with payers,” he said. “This was the original intent of our organization: to understand the language and the pathways of payers, of how they work, of formulary development. All of these things that are challenging for physicians to navigate.”
Hamburger acknowledged that the relationship between doctors and payers has not always been “smooth, collegial or even cordial,” but he said that the founders of United Rheumatology arrived at one important conclusion: “We realized that for these two sides to have an effective and productive relationship, we needed to sit down in a room together and talk,” he said. “This is why we will have payers speak to our attendees.”
Payers may say things that United Rheumatology members will not like, Hamburger told Healio Rheumatology. “But yelling and ranting does not accomplish much,” he said. “That is why we open the conversation with payers. We at UR have taken the time learn what their needs are and to explain what physicians need. We have built an organization that has decades of experience in the payer and benefit management space. It is our goal to address all of these issues at our meeting.”
The final component of the meeting circles back to clinical topics. “We have been developing a project in the area of personalized/precision medicine with the United Health Group research and development team,” Hamburger said. “Rheumatology is far behind oncology and other fields in terms of phenotyping disease and offering patients targeted therapies. We are trying to rectify that.”
With the advent of biologics and biosimilars, Hamburger said that rheumatology has “marvelous” drugs, but lamented that efficacy rates remain suboptimal. “There has been a significant amount of research done in precision medicine in rheumatology around the globe in this enormous and expensive undertaking,” he said. “We have put the right people from around the world together. We hope to update the group on the progress of this endeavor.”– by Rob Volansky
For more information:
Max I. Hamburger, MD, can be reached at 150 Motor Pkwy, Suite 108E, Hauppauge, NY 11788; email: maxhamburger@unitedrheumatology.com.
Disclosure: Hamburger reports leadership positions with United Rheumatology.