Advocacy for Office-Based Intervention

Abstract It is vital for physicians and stakeholders to act as advocates to preserve and improve access for patients to specialty services to improve quality of life and mortality. With the numerous changes in healthcare, advocacy for patient access to community-based cardiovascular (CV) services is needed more than ever. Access is often tied to covered and reimbursable services which have been reduced or threatened in the office-based interventional suites (OISs) for the past several years at state and national levels. The Outpatient Endovascular and Interventional Society (OEIS) and the Cardiovascular Coalition (CVC) formed in 2013 have focused on educating policymakers in Congress, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), as well as various regional and state agencies about access to peripheral artery disease and CV care in OIS. The CVC also has been dedicated to combatting the significant regional and racial disparities in lower extremity amputation rates across the United States. There have been numerous successes in defending against coverage policy proposals on national and regional levels through a coordinated collaborative approach. This chapter highlights and stresses the importance of a unified advocacy voice for all stakeholders involved in CV care for the sake of patients.