President’s letter: There ought to be a law…and there probably is

Tuesday, May 01, 2018 12:05 PM

by M. Robert Yakely, MD, CMS President

The Colorado Medical Society and our component societies around the state are pleased to launch the Know Your Legal Rights database: an online, searchable compilation of all of the Colorado laws in place to protect you and your patients from the unfair, predatory and unscrupulous practices of health plans. You can find the database at www.cms.org/kylr.

These physician protections have been secured through more than a decade of hard-hitting advocacy by CMS and our allies in the General Assembly and the rule-setting process, but many physicians are unaware that these laws exist or how to find and utilize them. With Know Your Legal Rights, CMS members and their practice staff can now easily access a robust guide to these rights that is searchable by topic or keyword. Read more about the tool in the cover story and in the Final Word column in this issue.

Go to www.cms.org/kylr to access the Know Your Legal Rights database. Sign in with your CMS username and password. If you're like me and have forgotten your username or password, don’t worry, there is a link on the page to easily recover them using your email address. In addition, CMS members’ practice managers can request a separate login from the CMS Membership Department.

Once logged in, scroll through the topic list or enter keywords in the search bar at the top of the page to find laws relevant to the problem, a summary of the law, and details about how the law affects physicians. The exact references to Colorado statutes are available in the sidebar of each entry.

We have much more planned to make Know Your Legal Rights as effective and valuable as possible for Colorado physicians, and for more projects that combine the collective strengths of the Colorado Medical Society and component medical societies to demonstrate our commitment to physicians around Colorado. I invite you to explore this tremendous tool and share your comments with me on this and future initiatives by emailing president@cms.org.