September 24, 1999

A group of MGH and Partners delegates descended on the nation’s capital Sept. 14 for the second annual Teaching Hospital Advocacy Day. More than 160 hospital leaders from across the country went to Washington, DC, to discuss with members of congress how the Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1997 has affected teaching hospitals.

Thomas Durant, MD, assistant director of the MGH; Jeanette Ives Erickson, RN, MS, senior vice president of Patient Care Services; and clinical vice presidents Ann Prestipino and Kate Walsh made up the MGH contingent accompanying Deborah Colton, director of Partners Government Relations and Jeff Otten, president of BWH.

The group of hospital leaders, led by representatives of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the American Hospital Association (AHA), met with a group of senators, including Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), to discuss the BBA and the resulting Medicare reductions that have negatively affected academic health centers.

To balance the federal budget in 1997, Congress reduced Medicare spending by $115 billion over five years. The goal was to save money by cutting what Medicare pays providers to take care of patients in hospitals and sub-acute settings. Since the BBA passed, hospitals and health systems across the country have had to make drastic cuts in services for all patients, not just those on Medicare.

According to Colton, the goal of this particular visit to the capital for Teaching Hospital Advocacy Day was to convince congressional leaders to freeze planned reductions in Medicare payments for graduate medical education this year. "We are supporting other, broader hospital BBA relief proposals, but the cut in graduate medical education is the BBA revision that has hit teaching hospitals the hardest," she says.

For more information about the BBA, log onto the AAMC website at www.aamc.org or the AHA website at www.aha.org.