Volume 05 | May 1, 2021
Colorado Option (HB21-1232) Passed out of Committee
As expected, HB21-1232 Standardized Health Benefit Plan Colorado Option passed out of committee on April 27th. ADEMS joins Colorado Medical Society in opposition to this bill in its current form. CMS has concerns with mandatory participation and physician rate setting. These concerns were brought up again in committee and the bill sponsor publicly promised to continue to work with CMS as the bill moves onto the Appropriations Committee before reaching the full House and Senate.

Please know that CMS is fully engaged and physicians are at the negotiation table with bill sponsors in a number of different strategies to either amend or kill this bill.

We ask our physician members to be ready to respond to the CMS CODE BLUE calls to action as soon as they occur.
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Stay up to date on the
2021 Legislative Session
Want to know the status of current health care related bills? Check out this link:

Explore health care related bills under consideration and positions voted on by the Council on Legislation - Colorado Medical Society.
Member Discounted PPE and COVID test kits
Have you tried ordering through ActionPPE?
Created during COVID-19 to deliver vital PPE and medical supplies to independent physicians who were largely ignored by traditional channels. ActionPPE has delivered more than 5 million units of FDA-certified PPE to physicians in 40 states through close collaboration with medical associations across the county like the Colorado Medical Society. The CMS partnership with ActionPPE.org has now expanded to include a Covid Test group-buy at below market prices. These FDA approved tests can be done in a provider’s office in just 10 minutes.
 
Reserve your Covid test kits today as stock will be allocated on a first-come-first-serve basis. This one time group purchase of 100k American-made COVID Antigen Test Kits are for medical professionals only.
 
Reserve yours today at: https://actionppe.org/cms
CMS Members - use your discount code: CMS-SAVE5
Controlled Substances only prescribed electronically effective July 1st
Passed In the 2019 legislative session, SB19-079 mandates that schedule II, III, or IV controlled substances only be prescribed electronically effective July 1, 2021 for physicians, physician assistants, advanced practice nurses, optometrists and podiatrists. Prescribing practitioners are required to indicate on license renewal questionnaires whether they have complied with the electronic prescribing requirement.

Earlier this year, the Colorado Board of Medicine adopted Rule 160 which specifies and defines qualified exceptions to the electronic prescription requirement which include “temporary technological failure”, “temporary electrical failure” and “economic hardship”. The process to demonstrate economic hardship, which will be determined by the Board, is also outlined.

Pharmacists do not need to verify the applicability of an exception to electronic prescribing when they receive an order for a controlled substance in writing, orally, or via facsimile transmission and may fill the order if otherwise valid under the law.
 
*For practices that do not have e-prescribing integrated with an electronic medical record, some members suggested a free app called iPrescribe which allows physicians to submit their prescriptions securely and quickly. The verification and set up process reportedly takes a bit of time but once that is in place, functionality and tech support are easy to master. More information can be found at https://www.iPrescribe.com.
Interested in becoming a COVID-19 Vaccinator?
CMS has partnered with Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) and the Colorado Academy of Family Physicians (CAFP) to connect primary care physicians who are willing to be COVID-19 vaccinators directly with vaccine supply. 

Help reach patients who may be unsure of receiving the vaccine or in need of individual counseling by their physician about COVID-19 and each patient's unique health issues.

There are storage and significant reporting requirements you will want to consider. Read more here.
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