Gwenesta B. Melton, MD, wears many hats as a rheumatologist, teacher and champion for advocacy and collaboration. She has been involved with the ASC for more than a decade.
The newest funding package reduces the latest cut to Medicare reimbursement from 3.4% to 1.68%. Although rheumatologists are faring better under Medicare in 2024, broader reforms remain the ACR’s highest priority regarding Medicare payments to physicians.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services updated recent regulations to clarify some points about remote physiologic monitoring (RPM) and remote therapeutic monitoring (RTM) services for key areas.
In an election year, it is critical that the ACR’s non-partisan political action committee be well positioned to support our congressional champions. Learn more about RheumPAC and its role in the ACR’s advocacy efforts.
The Insurance Subcommittee is working to address coverage and reimbursement challenges facing rheumatology practices, including issues related to biosimilar use, in-office treatments and the new G2211 code.
In early December, Sharad Lakhanpal, MBBS, MD, a rheumatologist at Rheumatology Associates in Dallas and past president of the ACR, traveled to Chiang Mai, Thailand, for the 2023 Congress of the Asia Pacific League of Associations for Rheumatology (APLAR). There he was named an APLAR Master. The award is presented to someone not from APLAR,…
Checking blood levels of commonly used disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) has gained widespread attention in the rheumatology community, even resulting in a recent guidance document from EULAR for biologics.1 Although a highly useful tool, drug level measurement in rheumatology is not without challenges; many of our drugs violate the basic principles of pharmacology that we…
For the 2023 Image Competition, the ACR sought images representing a diverse range of patients with idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIMs) or IIM mimics. Unilateral Heliotrope Rash in Anti-MDA-5 Antibody Dermatomyositis These images depict a 36-year-old patient with arthralgias, dyspnea and a unilateral heliotrope rash (image A). A unilateral heliotrope rash is a distinctive, but rare,…
“I’m actually from Iowa. Where do you hail from?” I replied, in the friendliest tone I could muster. Many readers may already know the context, but I’ll rewind a few moments to clear up any ambiguity. I was in clinic and talking with a kind lady with joint pain. While I was in the middle…
Patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) often face many concerns, fears and uncertainties that render “treatment decision making very difficult,” says Jasvinder Singh, MD, MPH, professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Often these patients, who tend to be women from minority groups, “do not have access to easily understandable…