NCCEP Against Proposed NC Bill to Eliminate Balance Billing by Hospital-Based Physicians

March 9, 2007

To all NCCEP members:

We are aware and are working to defeat the proposed bill introduced in the NC legislature on Thursday, March 1, 2007 to eliminate balance billing by hospital-based physicians (not just emergency physicians). Here is a link to the actual text of the bill: http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2007/Bills/House/HTML/H447v0.html.

NCCEP feels that this bill threatens the viability of the emergency medical system by hurting the viability of the professional services rendered in the ED by emergency physicians and on-call physicians. Every effort is being made to investigate the background, interact with the legislature, network with allies, and communicate our concerns with this bill to our legislators. We have formed a task force that will address short and long-term strategy regarding this issue. We will be looking to our members for assistance in communicating this complex issue in a simple way to our legislative colleagues. Thank you for your future support.

Vivek Tayal, MD, FACEP
President, North Carolina College of Emergency Physicians
vtayal@carolinas.org