Dear Colleague,
Although the Texas Legislature isn’t even in session yet, the Dallas County Medical Society and Texas Medical Association already are working to protect the interests of physicians and their patients in the upcoming session.

Your physician colleagues spoke out on your behalf at the TEXPAC Grassroots Forum in January, voicing support for instilling transparency in the insurance industry, for holding the line on tort reform, and for ensuring that any scope of practice expansions are handled through “education, not legislation.” And nationally, Texas physicians are working with Congress to fix the flawed Medicare payment system.

Throughout the interim legislative session, your colleagues host small dinners with individual legislators, covering issues we expect them to face during the 2009 session. We get their thoughts about expected threats to tort reform, expansion of retail health clinics, and issues regarding physician ownership, and have the opportunity to tell them how their physicians/ constituents feel about those issues.

As a DCMS and TMA member, you can receive legislative updates about issues important to physicians and become involved in the political process. You can meet with legislators in the district and in Austin, join us for small dinners, and interview candidates for political office.

Newer physicians and those new to Texas may be unaware of the strength of DCMS and TMA. DCMS is the second-largest medical society in Texas and the second largest in the country—with more members than many state medical associations. The 42,000 physicians who make up TMA form a powerful voice for good medicine in this state.

DCMS and TMA have a long history of working together to enhance the quality of health care in Texas. We continuously look to provide solutions for the budget constraints, stretched resources and outside forces that hamper your ability to practice medicine. But we need your help to be successful. I encourage you to seek out your colleagues who are actively involved with TMA and DCMS. They will give you an earful of how we can help you. The more members we have, the more effective we can be.

Please contact Tracy Casto, DCMS director of public affairs, if you would like more information on the legislative issues facing Dallas physicians. Her email is tracy@dallas-cms.org or call her at (214) 413-1427.

Sincerely,
William Walton, MD
DCMS President

P.S. I urge you to actively participate in the organizations that put you and your patients first!