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6 EW SHOW DAILY Monday, April 22, 2013 ASCRS News Today ASCRS Film Festival expected to draw submissions on cutting-edge technologies by Ellen Stodola EyeWorld Staff Writer J ust over three decades old, the ASCRS Film Festival is back again at the ASCRS• ASOA Symposium & Congress. William Fishkind, MD, Tucson, Ariz., the event's committee chairman, believes the event is poised to draw a similar number of participants as in previous years, with an approach and categories that have been successful in the past. He also expects the videos to address new topics this year, mainly some of the emerging cutting edge technologies. "The Film Festival is always interesting, always educational, and often surprising," Dr. Fishkind said. He said in the last few years, the event has looked back at people and videos that have previously made it a success. "This year we're going to do more of an entertaining opening and pick up where we've left off in the past with a number of incredible video submissions," he said. Dr. Fishkind said that between 160 and 180 submissions are expected from all over the world for this year's Film Festival, which he said is a similar number to previous Film Festival judges review the 2013 entries. years. "This year, I think we're going to see some more submissions on cutting edge technology for femtosecond cataract surgery, femtosecond corneal surgery, corneal inlays, and probably a number of submissions on dealing with complicated cataracts and complicated pseudophakic problems," he said. The videos submitted are always educational and interesting, he said. "I expect there will be, as always, a group of videos that are so superb that you can't not watch them be- cause you're going to learn something and enjoy the learning process." The categories this year will be the same as in past years, including Cataract Complications, Cataract/ Implant Surgery, Glaucoma Surgery, In-house Productions, Instruments and Devices/IOLs, New Producer, New Techniques, Quality Teaching, Refractive/Cornea Surgery, and Special Interest. Dr. Fishkind highlighted the importance of the New Producer cate- Dr. McClellan said another problem with payment reform for physicians is that specialties sometimes create a "circle of wagons" around the topic. "[It's] focused on the cost of care and payments in Medicare for clinician services only," he said. "That's only about 17% of all Medicare payments. What really matters is physicians' decisions and with the physician payment system as a result, its impact on the rest of Medicare spending. So more than 80% of spending in total depends on what happens with physician decisions. And physicians work with things like, what [kind] of care patients are using for treatment, whether complications can be prevented, whether [there are] more efficient ways of using hospitals, drugs, devices, imaging, everything else that Medicare pays for. Nothing in Medicare's current fee-for-service system really does anything to help encourage progress on that front— that's the big opportunity for costsavings and health improvements in our healthcare system." continued from page 1 sufficient and policy reform for more personalized health care at lower costs is key. He said effective healthcare reform needs more accountability and support for value-based care. He touched briefly on 2013 issues including Affordable Care Act (ACA) implementation, Medicare physician/clinician payment reform and scope of practice regulation and reimbursement, focusing mainly on value-based healthcare reform, including measures of value and outcomes, payment reform such as Accountable Care Organizations (ACO), and bundled payments. "The way that fee-for-service payment rates have gone in the past years is, they're not keeping up with your costs of practice and don't permit … a culture change needed in investments to set up new relationships with, say, ACOs and investments in ambulatory facilities that are cheaper than the out-patient hospital alternative," he said. Discussion In a discussion period after his talk, Dr. McClellan answered questions from the audience. One audience member asked, "who is speaking from medicine in this regard constructively" on healthcare reform. Dr. McClellan said ASCRS' excellent Government Relations group has been leading the way, as well as other groups, in this field. "This [ophthalmology] specialty has been terrific in terms of focusing on outcomes and focusing on measureable improvements in health from the population in a really critical area in terms of vision, and I hope that continues to translate into leadership on healthcare reform, and actually improves health and avoids unnecessary costs," Dr. McClellan said. EW gory, which has been part of the Film Festival for the past four years and targets submissions from those who have never before submitted videos or who have submitted videos and not won. "The purpose of the New Producer category is to make equal the playing field so new producers get a chance to be recognized for their early efforts, and I always encourage new producers to submit in that category," Dr. Fishkind said. Another aspect of the Film Festival that is back this year is the "People's Choice," which was introduced last year and allows attendees to determine some of the most popular videos. Voters are allowed to choose their top video, and voting is linked to registrants' badge numbers to ensure one vote per person. "That was truly an experiment to see what would happen, and it turned out to be fascinating," Dr. Fishkind said. One thing that will be different about this year's Film Festival is the judging—more specifically, the panel that will be doing the judging. "We have a new judging panel, or at least some of our panel is new, and the judges are all excited to see the submissions and to review the various videos," Dr. Fishkind said. He explained that there is a constant moving around of the judges, and each one can only judge for a maximum of three years. "There's constant change in the judges because it keeps it fresh," Dr. Fishkind said. "It keeps the Film Festival fresh, it keeps the judging fresh, and I think it's fairer for all the participants." The panel includes an international guest judge, who is different every year, and a chief judge. This year's international guest judge is Ronald Yeoh, MD, Singapore, and the chief judge is Thomas John, MD, Chicago. Other judges for the 2013 Film Festival are Mark Blecher, MD, Philadelphia, Nicole Fram, MD, Los Angeles, David Hardten, MD, Minneapolis, Ken Rosenthal, MD, Great Neck, N.Y., Jonathan Rubenstein, MD, Chicago, and Spencer Thornton, MD, Nashville, Tenn. Judges choose films by taking into account several factors, including applicability and continued on page 8