Steven Weinberger, MD, FACP

Individual physician responsibility will be the focus of the 2011 President’s Lecture. Steven Weinberger, MD, FACP, executive vice president and chief executive officer of the American College of Physicians (ACP), will deliver the President’s Lecture, “Challenges for the Subspecialist in the Era of Healthcare Reform,” from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesday in the Wells Fargo Theatre Section 2 on the street level of the Colorado Convention Center.

“Healthcare is at a crossroads, and we wonder how the political climate will affect our practice of medicine,” said ATS President Dean E. Schraufnagel. “I asked Dr. Weinberger to give the Presidential Lecture on how legislative changes and the political environment will affect us.”

Healthcare reform will challenge physicians to deliver quality care to patients while holding down costs. “I want the audience to get the sense of responsibility that individual physicians have to look beyond the care of their patients and to what’s happening at a social level with healthcare,” Dr. Weinberger said.

All physicians, subspecialists included, can secure their positions and the care of their patients by being part of the solution. Dr. Weinberger’s talk will focus on two themes: redesigning the delivery of care and keeping down medical costs.

Dr. Weinberger supports the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) and patient-centered medical neighborhood (PCMN) as the models for delivering care. The team-based approach of the home/neighborhood models is designed to improve the patient experience and the quality of healthcare. “This should be of interest to subspecialists, who are usually part of the ‘neighborhood,’ as they collaborate with primary care physicians in caring for patients,” he said.

PCMHs and PCMNs are also models for cost savings. Dr. Weinberger will present evidence from pilot studies showing that the models decrease emergency room visits and hospitalizations.

Beyond models of delivering care, Dr. Weinberger said, it’s the responsibility of the physician to keep costs down. “I will look at potential opportunities for the physician to address the cost of care caused by the overuse or misuse of diagnostic testing,” he said.

For example, he said, pulmonologists could take the step of not ordering a chest CT when a chest X-ray would be the appropriate test. In the emergency department, doctors could refrain from ordering CT angiograms to rule out pulmonary emboli in patients whose pre-test clinical evaluation suggests that thromboembolic disease is unlikely.