The Coalition for Microsurgical Breast Reconstruction
Building a community to ensure women can have real, covered access to breast reconstruction using their own tissue.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons' Coalition for Microsurgical Breast Reconstruction is a critical element to its success in the Initiative to Support Microsurgical Breast Reconstruction.
Success in the Initiative rests on demonstrating how important these procedures are to women with breast cancer, not just because ASPS believes those women have a fundamental right to choose from among every medical option throughout their care continuum, but also because microsurgical breast reconstruction has excellent clinical and patient-reported outcomes. Payers need to hear from their customers and the people who love their customers and the providers who care for their customers that, because health insurers are working in the realm of people's health and lives, they have to treat their customers not as customers, but as people trying to survive and regain their health.
ASPS is committed to changing the payer mindset when it comes to breast cancer reconstruction. The Coalition for Microsurgical Breast Reconstruction has a substantial role in helping ASPS maximize those efforts.
This coalition seeks to bring together organizations that serve as the voice of the woman with cancer, whether it be the person fighting cancer, the people who love and advocate for the cancer patient, or the people who seek to cure and make her whole.
If you represent an organization that is interested in joining the Coalition, please contact ASPS.
The Coalition for Microsurgical Breast Reconstruction brings breast cancer patients, cancer advocates and healthcare providers from throughout the breast cancer care continuum together to raise awareness of advanced autologous breast reconstruction options and support public and health insurance company policy changes that make those options available to all women who have a mastectomy and want to undergo breast reconstruction. As the coalition's founding organization, ASPS will convene participants to discuss the issue of access to microsurgical breast reconstruction, socialize opportunities to directly participate in ASPS advocacy efforts and develop response strategies.
The Coalition:
- Meets to develop strategic advice to inform ASPS's Initiative to Support Microsurgical Breast Reconstruction, to explore and develop opportunities to work on individual projects and campaigns as a coalition and to communicate individual coalition member efforts to support breast cancer care.
- Connects directly into individual ASPS projects being executed to carry out the Initiative to ensure the patient perspective is at the forefront of project objectives.
- Serves as a mechanism for concisely demonstrating the large patient and provider support for microsurgical breast reconstruction by "co-signing" ASPS communications to policymakers and insurers.
- Connects individual coalition member organizations with one another in order to spur additional constructive collaborations and mutually reinforcing efforts in other areas of cancer advocacy.
- Provides individual coalition members with access to ASPS materials and coalition-specific materials that the members can use in their organization's individual work in support of breast cancer patients.