Saturday, September 25, 2010

Help Your Neurologist be Included in Primary Care Incentives

I have to visit my neurologists every two months. During these visits, my neurologist gives me a mini physical, including a neurological physical, checks my medications to see if they need adjusting or replacing and verifies if I need any additional testing.

In my opinion, my neurologist provides me with a similar primary care that a PCP gives to their patients plus the extra care I need.

Why am I telling you about this and why is this such a big deal?

The recent health care reform act, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), provides incentives to encourage primary care but didn't include neurologists among the eligible health care providers. As stated above, my neurologist provides me with my primary care. I wouldn't dream of going to anyone else at this point in my life. The fear is that with the exclusion of neurologists in this incentive program could further complicate the lack of Migraine and headache specialists we are already faced with.

How can you help?

Congressmen Michael Burgess (R-Tx) and Russ Carnahan (D-Mo) sent a letter to your US House members on September 21st. You can email your US Representative and ask him or her to sign this letter in support of your neurologist! It's real easy for you if you follow this link to send an email message to your Representatives As Soon As Possible.

You don't even need to know their email address! This automated system will allow you to add a personal message to an email asking your Rep to sign the letter and then will find your Reps email address based on your address. When I filled out my email, it took me about 10 minutes to complete everything.

Please contact your US Representative now!

.

2 comments:

Teri said...

Thanks for posting this!

MigrainePuppet said...

Teri - Thank you for all you do!