The American Chiropractic Association (ACA) is pleased to announce that Anthony Hamm, DC, FACO, president of the ACA Council of Delegates, is the first doctor of chiropractic to be elected co-chair of the American Medical Association's (AMA) Health Care Professionals Advisory Committee Review Board (HCPAC). The HCPAC develops recommendations on relative values for new and revised CPT codes for non-MD/DO services. Dr. Hamm's two-year term begins in September.
In his role as HCPAC co-chair, Dr. Hamm will also serve on the AMA/Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC). The RUC makes annual recommendations on relative values regarding new and revised services to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and performs broad reviews every five years of the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS), which determines Medicare provider reimbursement.
"ACA strongly supported Dr. Hamm's nomination to this position given his clinical and socioeconomic experience and expertise in making appropriate recommendations for CPT codes across specialties," said ACA President Rick McMichael, DC. "This historic event is consistent with the ACA's commitment to the delivery of high quality patient care by doctors of chiropractic within multi-disciplinary practice settings."
Dr. Hamm has extensive experience and expertise in health care reimbursement issues, including CPT coding and the RBRVS system. He has served as the chiropractic adviser to the AMA RUC/HCPAC; taught coding, documentation, Medicare and risk management to the chiropractic profession for the past nine years; and contributed as an author to the ACA's Chiropractic Coding and Compliance Manual.
Dr. Hamm also was invited in 2008 by Quality Insights of Pennsylvania to offer advice on the development of quality measures for the CMS Physician Quality Reporting Index (now PQRS), is an adviser for the Cigna Government Services Medicare Administrative Contractor, and serves as a board liaison to ACA's Performance Measures Workgroup.
Dr. Hamm, who also serves as the ACA's North Carolina Delegate, directs a private chiropractic practice in Goldsboro, N.C. He received his doctor of chiropractic degree from National University of Health Sciences and has earned diplomate certification from the American Board of Chiropractic Orthopedics and the American Board of Forensic Professionals.
Source: American Chiropractic Association
When I graduated from chiropractic college in 1981 and started practice, I heard it all, and very little was positive. “You are a quack; you do not know what a subluxation is; you couldn’t get into a real health care program, so you chose the one that is slightly above a mail-order degree; you have no proof that chiropractic works; Are you really licensed?”, and so much more.
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