Welcome to The Georgia Chapter of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS)

The Georgia Chapter continues to seek legislative relief for the lack of coverage for bariatric surgery in the State Health Benefit Plan. This is the primary focus of the GA Chapter’s advocacy and access to care efforts.

Access to care for Georgia patients will remain a top priority for the chapter, including the restoration of the insurance benefit covering bariatric surgery for Georgia’s state employees, retirees and teachers.

Mission

To promote the interchange of ideas, information and experience among bariatric surgeons, to promote improved perioperative and long-term care of patients and reduce patient risk, and to encourage and foster education and educational programs for the physicians, lay people and paramedical persons involved in the care of bariatric surgical patients.

Become a Fellow

ASMBS is accepting Fellow and International Fellow applications. Review the requirements for more information.

Learn More

Important Message from ASMBS Access to Care Committee

I hope everyone is doing well. I wanted to send a quick access update. I’m sure many of you have received the announcement from the ACS regarding the upcoming SAR release. Essentially the ACS MBSAQIP program has updated the data collection system, and–with the transition and IT challenges–the SARs have been affected. The soon to be released SAR will only have 6 months of data. Depending on the timing, this may alter confidence intervals and statistics. The concern is this could have an unfair negative impact on a program’s data with regards to insurance center designation.

In a preemptive effort, Dr. Hutter and I have sent a letter to BC/BS on everyone’s behalf expressing this concern. The letter was reviewed and approved by the ECEC and sent out this morning. We have asked that a center should not have BDC removed or a current appeal denied based upon only 50% of data. Certainly not the standard benchmark for accreditation. I will keep you updated if BC/BS replies.

Also, the MBSAQIP program is creating a letter for any program to use as an appeal if the BDC (or any designation) is lost due to only having 6 months of data. You can reach out to your individual MBSAQIP contact if you end up being impacted by the limited SAR data.

If the STARs and Chapter presidents could disseminate this information to their respective chapters, this would help spread the word.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Best,
Joe
C. Joe Northup, MD, FACS, FASMBS
Medical Director
Premier Weight Loss Solutions
Chair, ASMBS Access to Care Committee
ObesityPAC Board Member
ASMBS Executive Council Member

Advocacy in Action
Obesity Care Awareness Day in GA
February 4, 2020.

Membership

You must be an ASMBS member to join the ASMBS Georgia State Chapter. Chapter dues are collected by the national Society. When you pay your yearly ASMBS dues you will automatically be prompted to pay your yearly chapter dues.