Become a member and receive career-enhancing benefits
Our top priority is providing value to members. Your Member Services team is here to ensure you maximize your ACS member benefits, participate in College activities, and engage with your ACS colleagues. It's all here.
Become a member and receive career-enhancing benefits
Our top priority is providing value to members. Your Member Services team is here to ensure you maximize your ACS member benefits, participate in College activities, and engage with your ACS colleagues. It's all here.
The Graduating Surgeon: A Primer for Surgical Trainees
This primer from the Young Fellows Association of the American College of Surgeons provides detailed information to prepare residents entering practice and surgeons who are considering changing jobs. Topics covered include planning a job change, the search, after signing, and other considerations are aptly covered in this easy-to-follow primer.
ACS Resources for the Practicing Surgeon, Volume III: Contracting with Private Payors
The days when one could enter the practice of surgery with only a passing knowledge of the business climate and extensive regulations that come with running a surgical practice are long gone. The ACS Division of Advocacy and Health Policy (DAHP), along with the Practice Protection Committee, collaborated with Fellows and experts in health law, managed care, and revenue cycle to highlight some of the important economic principles underlying health insurance markets, which are essential for any surgeon to understand when entering into and negotiating contracts with private payors on behalf of their practice. This primer provides guidance aimed at helping Fellows develop productive relationships with payors, evaluate insurance contract agreements, and improve practice management processes to optimize reimbursement from commercial health plans.
ACS Resources for the Practicing Surgeon, Volume II: The Private Practice Surgeon
While many markets continue to see increases in the institutional employment of physicians, there still remains a substantial number of surgeons in private practice, and many of those surgeons are operating successfully in that environment. How do they do it? What is the "secret sauce" that helps them maintain a successful business? The ACS Division of Advocacy and Health Policy (DAHP), along with the General Surgery Coding and Reimbursement Committee, collaborated with Fellows and practice management experts to capture valuable lessons, tips, and insights that can help surgeons thrive in private practice. This primer provides an overview of various private practice business arrangements, financial management and revenue cycle processes, relevant health care laws and rules, and methods to ensure the ongoing prosperity of a practice.
ACS Resources for the Practicing Surgeon, Volume I: The Employed Surgeon
Since the publication of the Surgeons as Institutional Employees: A Strategic Look at the Dimensions of Surgeons as Employees of Hospitals primer in 2012, institutional and hospital-based physician employment has only become more complex. The ACS Division of Advocacy and Health Policy (DAHP), along with the General Surgery Coding and Reimbursement Committee, revamped and expanded the 2012 primer in response to requests from Fellows for more help in navigating the waters of employment, understanding compensation, negotiating contracts, and more. This updated primer is the first volume in a series of resources the DAHP is working to produce for practicing surgeons.
Strategies to Enhance Survival in Active Shooter and Intentional Mass Casualty Events: A Compendium
The compendium was developed in response to a Presidential Policy Directive aimed at strengthening the security and resilience of the U.S. at a time when active shooter and mass casualty incidents are occurring all too frequently. The compendium contains Hartford Consensus reports that have been published previously in the Bulletin and the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. These reports represent the deliberations of the Joint Committee to Create a National Policy to Enhance Survivability from Intentional Mass Casualty and Active Shooter Events.
The committee hopes the compendium will assist in achieving the Presidential Policy Directive and that the lifesaving techniques described in the articles will help to ensure that when bystanders see something where lives are at stake, they can do something to improve survivability.
Surgeons and Medical Liability: A Guide to Understanding Medical Liability Reform
Medical liability in the U.S. is criticized as being costly, inefficient, and inconsistent. This broken system is failing both doctors and patients alike. For more than 40 years, numerous reform efforts have failed to pass legislation that contains costs, stabilizes liability insurance premiums, and meaningfully promotes patient safety. As a result, a number of alternative reform propositions, very different from traditional tort reform, are currently being considered for health system implementation in state and federal legislation. The ACS has developed this primer to inform ACS Fellows about the history of medical liability as well as alternative, innovative reform approaches to the status quo of tort law in the U.S.
SurgeonsVoice Advocacy Guide: Tools and Resources to Become an Effective Surgeon Advocate
For hundreds of years, citizens of the U.S. have exercised their right to petition their government, serving as advocates for many issues, causes, and ideals. In an ever-changing health care system, it is vital for surgeons to be engaged in policymaking, rulemaking, and lawmaking. The ACS Division of Advocacy and Health Policy staff has developed this primer to help you become a successful surgeon advocate with helpful tips for building relationships, tracking legislation, communicating more effectively, getting your ACS Chapter involved, and more.
Surgeons and Bundled Payment Models: A Primer for Understanding Alternative Physician Payment Approaches
The ACS General Surgery Coding and Reimbursement Committee (GSCRC) developed this primer to inform you, our ACS Fellows, about the concept of bundled payment and the effect bundled payment policies could have on surgical practices. In this primer, we introduce the concept of a surgical bundled payment, describe existing bundled payment programs, discuss the GSCRC Surgical Bundled Care Project, and present concepts to consider in deciding whether to participate in a bundled payment model. Knowledge of these programs and their implications will be critical to the successful implementation of bundled payment as an alternative payment model for surgical procedures.
Surgeons as Institutional Employees: A Strategic Look at the Dimensions of Surgeons as Employees of Hospitals
In the 1990s, with the move toward managed care and health maintenance organizations, hospitals began to purchase physician practices, especially primary care practices, in large numbers. However, these ventures, in general, were not successful. Recently, there has been a renewed movement toward employment of physicians by hospitals, especially specialty physicians. We developed this primer to provide you with valuable information that we hope you will find useful when considering institutional or hospital-based employment.
Our Changing Health Care System Since the Inception of the Affordable Care Act
At the ACS, we feel it is our responsibility to ensure that surgeons fully understand the breadth of the legislative and regulatory health care landscape very seriously. Our Changing Health Care System Since the Inception of the Affordable Care Act represents a compendium of articles from the ACS Bulletin along with two surgical practice primers, which provide a retrospective and, to some extent, a prospective look at the changing health care landscape.
