- Appoint Integrated Medicine
Physicians to the MQAC
The Governor appoints the members of Washington
Medical Quality Assurance Commission. A huge part of the problem
is the limited knowledge base on the board. Currently, the board
is attempting to regulate practices without any expertise on the
board. This puts both the public and providers at risk, since the
board lacks the expertise to perform it's stated
objectives.
- Form Holistic Medicine
Board
Arizona and Nevada have sought to solve this problem
by forming a separate medical board to oversee the practice of
integrative medicine. Those states chose to form homeopathic
boards. The problem with this approach is that many integrative
medicine physicians use both allopathic and homeopathic techniques,
which leads to some concern over jurisdiction.
- Require Consultants to Meet Strict
Standards
The following are generally agreed upon
standards accepted by groups working with medical
experts.
- That they currently practice medicine in the
same area as they are acting as a consultant.
- They have training in the area i.e. if the case
involves chelation they should show they been trained in chelation
techniques.
- That no more than 20% of their income is
derived from consulting.
- Reimbursement methods should neutral.
Currently there is a financial incentive for
consultants to find fault with care. They are paid on an
hourly basis.
- Peer review of all reports. Consultants
whose reports do meet peer review standards should not be
used. Requests for peer review should be submitted to
the appropriate medical society, i.e chelation, ACAM or ICIM;
peroxide case, IOMA, etc for a list of qualified
experts.
- Consultants providing inaccurate reports should
be subject to medical discipline by their state medical
boards.
MQAC could adopt some safe harbor provisions.
A safe harbor provision does not infer approval of a practice or even
imply that a particular practice is effective only that it meets the
standard of not causing harm or the reasonable expectation that it could
cause harm.
Many integrative practices are in such wide use,
that a defacto standard of care has been established for the safe use of
that practice. One criteria for such a standard would be the
ability to demonstrate the adoption of the standard by at least
licensed100 practicing physicians.
Integrative Medicine Associations such as ACAM,
ICIM, IOMA have published standardized protocols. The MQAC could
with good conscience adopt these standards as safe harbors for
physicians practicing integrative medicine. Presumably any
specialty medical society would have developed conservative treatment
standards that provide standards for patient safety.
The Washington Medical Quality Assurance
Coard is not following the law. The section of the law which the
board is using to conduct their witch hunts is RCW 18.130.180 paragraph
4 incomptetence, requires the board prove that there is evidence of harm
or the possibility that a practice might cause harm. The state
legislature should require the board to defend their positions in public
hearings. |
