This is the latest monthly update on a few of the critical issues facing the SVS.
Changing SVS leadership demographics
Over the last several years, the SVS Leadership and Appointments Committee made a determined effort to be more inclusive of the full spectrum of SVS members, with a specific focus on early-career and female vascular surgeons. As evidence of these efforts, early-career members comprise about 25% of our membership but 33% of the recent Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM) Program Committee and 50% of the Postgraduate Education Committee (PGEC).
Women comprise about 23% of our membership but 50% of SVS committee and council chairs, and currently serve as SVS president-elect, president of the Association of Program Directors in Vascular Surgery (APDVS), president of the Southern Association for Vascular Surgery (SAVS) and chair of the Vascular Surgery Board (VSB). Additionally, two of the three editors-in-chief of Rutherford’s Vascular Surgery and Endovascular Therapy textbook are women, while the new Journal of Vascular Surgery editor-in-chief is also a woman.
Increasing our visibility
The SVS branding campaign is ongoing, continuing apace with William Shutze, MD, past SVS secretary, leading the “Highway to Health” project, and SVS Advocacy Council Chair Megan Tracci, MD, JD, and Megan Marcinko, the SVS’s senior director for public affairs and advocacy, spearheading our SVS Advocacy Conference in Washington, D.C.
SVS public relations efforts are paying off. Each media outlet calculates their public relations impact via monthly impressions, which are the number of times articles, videos, ads, blogs, social media posts, etc., are consumed. There were 1.1 billion vascular-related impressions when President Donald J. Trump was recently diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency (CVI).
CMS reimbursements
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released its CY2026 Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule. Overall, vascular surgeons are slated for a combined increase of 5%, although there is an underlying differential based on site of service and case mix. Through the efforts of the SVS Coding Committee and Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC)/Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) advisors, CMS proposed to accept the physician work recommendations for all 46 new lower extremity codes. However, CMS is proposing to significantly lower the RUC-recommended work values for thoracic branched endovascular services and to apply an efficiency adjustment to the work relative value units (wRVUs) and intra-service time of most services (2.5% decrease). The vascular surgery Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) Value Pathways (MVP) was also included in the proposed rule. MVPs are the newest reporting option to assess quality of care. The vascular surgery MVP was designed by the SVS Quality and Performance Metrics Committee (QPMC). Traditional MIPS will be sunsetting by 2029, so vascular surgeons needed an MVP to add additional measures. The QPMC collects data for five MVPs: abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), carotid, venous, chronic limb-threatening ischemia (CLTI) and hemodialysis access. Compared to traditional MIPS, MVPs will reduce the reporting burden and improve payments for vascular surgeons.
I want to express our gratitude to Evan Lipsitz, MD, from the QPMC; David Han, MD, chair of the Coding Committee; Mounir “Joe” Haurani, MD, chair of the Government Relations Committee; our Advocacy, Clinical Practice and Quality councils; and especially Megan Marcinko, Carrie McGraw, SVS manager for quality improvement and practice, and SVS professional staff and staff consultants.
Keith Calligaro, MD, is SVS president.
