 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
President's Page
January 2007
The "New and Improved"
Dallas County Medical Society
2007 DCMS PresidentWelcome to the New Year and to the “new and improved” Dallas County Medical Society. I realize this sounds more like the introduction for a new detergent, but changes are in the wind for your county medical society. I’ll give you some background to help illustrate my point.
Dallas County Medical Society started in the late 19th century and has grown to become one of the largest medical societies in the nation. Since its inception it has sought to meets the needs of member physicians. It has provided the structure for collaborative and grassroots strategies as members interact with their community, hospitals, governmental agencies, politicians, and the media. Additionally the members provide the foundation that supports the TMA and AMA.
DCMS is filled with incredibly intelligent physicians who are highly motivated to advance the health of their community and are backed by organizations of like quality, such as DCMS and TMA. As a result, the influence of DCMS today reaches farther than we ever expected. In the past, DCMS was the one reaching out to the community on behalf of physicians. Over time, however, DCMS and its members have become a trusted resource in our community, and now it’s the community that is looking to DCMS for answers on a broad range of topics such as disaster planning, health information technology, healthcare funding, and the uninsured.
At the same time, the needs of our members have become more diverse, given the political, economic, and demographic changes in our profession. The fact that DCMS is viewed as a trusted community resource with no tie to a particular hospital system, political party, religion, or demographic is quite a compliment. But with that trust comes responsibility. The increased demands on our medical society threaten to overwhelm our capability to continue delivering quality service and responses to our members and to our community. We simply cannot do everything that is asked of us, so we are taking steps to prioritize and to focus on what is most important.
This is where the “new and improved” comes in. In late 2006, the board of directors, committee chairs, several past presidents, and our administrative officers met for a strategic planning session—the first session ever. It lasted only part of one day but covered a smorgasbord of topics. A draft of the meeting’s outcomes was presented to your board in December. Soon I will begin to discuss with you broad ideas regarding the medical society’s mission statement, goals, and competencies. As the year continues, we will discuss and develop more focused strategies. All this is aimed at making Dallas County Medical Society a more representative and effective society for our members. I look forward to your feedback—this is your medical society.
Now let’s change the discussion. This is a legislative year for our state government. Many changes occurred during this last election, and the results will bear fruit with the upcoming legislative session. Medicine has many issues on the front burner, including “low pay” and “slow pay” from insurers and the state, funding for graduate medical education, physician investment and ownership in specialty hospitals, the corporate practice of medicine, and scope of practice (should podiatrists be allowed to operate on the ankle and knee?). Most importantly will be a push to destroy the gains made with the passage of Proposition 12 in 2003. The tort reform has resulted in concrete benefits. Insurance rates are down, more insurers are in the Texas market, and twice as many physicians are applying for a Texas license. These changes are good for physicians and good for their patients. However, forces are coming together to increase the caps on lawsuits. Although Prop 12 was a constitutional amendment, the caps can be raised with a simple majority vote in the Legislature. Raising the noneconomic caps from $250,000 per physician to $750,000 would neuter the constitutional amendment and send us back to the “bad old days.”
What can you do? Write your elected officials. You can do it from your home or office. A short one-page note is all you need to get your point across. Call Tracy Casto at DCMS (214-413-1427) or email Tracy@dallas-cms.org to find out whom to write and at what address. A phone call to your representatives during the session also is helpful. The most effective way to get your legislator’s attention is to join your colleagues at a First Tuesday meeting put on by TMA. You can attend any or all of them: Feb 6, March 6, April 3, and May 1. Take your white coat, and spend the day in Austin with an increasing number of your fellow physicians. Clear your schedule and take the opportunity to meet with state senators and representatives. The event begins at the TMA headquarters in Austin. There is a hotel just across the street if you want to spend the night. I can’t overemphasize the impact these meetings have on our elected officials. Go to the TMA website at www.texmed.org for details and registration.
I will close with the following quote. It is a familiar one but timely.
“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—
in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in
except to convictions of honor and good sense.”— Winston Churchill
List of Past President Pages
Home | Who
We Are | Membership | DCMS
In Action | Communications
| Community Service
Products & Services
| Business of Medicine | Legislative
Issues | Physician
Finder | DMJ On-Line
 |
Copyright © 1997-2004, Dallas
County Medical Society. Information contained in this site does not constitute
legal or medical advice. |
