Contents tagged with president's letter
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Texas Family Physician - Vol. 66 No. 2, Spring 2015
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President’s letter
Perspective
CONTENTS
Back to the future with direct primary careRemember a time when you could treat your patients … more
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Cutting out the middle man
By Dale Ragle, MD
TAFP President, 2014-2015Greetings colleagues. Do you remember a time when you could take care of your patients without any of the hassle and expense associated with billing insurance companies? When you could spend as much time with your patient as needed? When you simply received payment from your patients instead of some third-party payer?
Many physicians practicing today have only heard stories of those days, but a growing number are rediscovering them by stepping off the insurance treadmill and contracting directly with their patients. Direct primary care is an innovative model for delivering and purchasing health care services that gives physicians and their patients an alternative to the third party, fee-for-service system. For a flat monthly fee, patients have unlimited access to their doctor—in person and by phone or e-mail—for a full range of comprehensive primary care services including acute and urgent care, regular checkups, preventive care, chronic disease management, and care coordination.
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Texas Family Physician - Vol. 66 No. 1, Winter 2015
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President’s letter
Perspective
CONTENTS
Texas Family Physician of the Year 2014-15: Russell Thomas, Jr., DO, MPHThis year’s Physician … more
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All hands on deck
By Dale Ragle, MD
TAFP President, 2014-2015Welcome colleagues to a new year, a new Congress, and a new Texas Legislature. On all fronts, health care is evolving. These changes present family physicians tremendous opportunities to shape our future health care system. It’s up to all of us as family physicians to advocate for our specialty in the halls where decisions are made that affect our patients and our practices.
In Washington, D.C., the 114th Congress is well under way and is busy on a number of health care issues. AAFP’s advocacy work is focused on fixing Medicare’s broken payment model, changing Meaningful Use requirements, delaying ICD-10, and reforming graduate medical education funding. Another area in which AAFP is concentrating efforts is in making payment for direct primary care services a qualified health benefit under IRS rules. This would enable patients to pay for direct primary care with pre-tax HSA and FLEX account dollars, a move that would aid the expansion of this emerging and promising model of practice.
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Texas Family Physician - Vol. 65 No. 4, Fall 2014
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President’s letter
Perspective
CONTENTS
Embracing change in the ValleyA small group of independent primary care docs in and around … more
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Keep doing what you do best; change what needs to be changed
An adaptation of the 2014-2015 incoming president’s address
By Dale Ragle, MD
TAFP President, 2014-2015It is an honor and a privilege to serve my fellow family docs as TAFP President. There is no other group of people that I would rather serve and give my time to than you. I represent all of you, whether you are a solo, rural doc in west Texas where you may be the only doctor within 70 miles, a doctor in a big multi-specialty group, a resident in training, or a medical student aspiring for a career in family medicine. You all deserve my service and attention and you all shall get it.
The last three members to serve as president of our organization have initiated their terms with inaugural speeches about change and reform of our health care system. I too will tell you that our health care system is indeed changing and we are going to have to adapt in some way. The forces driving this change are bigger than TAFP, they are bigger than AAFP, and they are bigger than the AMA.
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Get connected: Take advantage of the many social and educational networking opportunities your Academy has to offer
By Clare Hawkins, M.D., M.Sc.
TAFP President, 2013-2014Electronic opportunities to connect with friends, family, and colleagues abound. I can communicate very quickly with people I know and people I don’t know. I can broadcast ideas by blogging and I can post photos or see others’ photos in many ways. This is both exciting and frightening. Who am I reaching? Who knows these details about me?
As a family physician most of my contact is with individual patients or their families, essentially one on one. Therefore these new opportunities are not familiar to my normal social intercourse. I’m so used to confidentiality and preserving my professional image that in my middle age, I find myself uncomfortable reaching out.
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Slow medicine: Taking time to practice the art of family medicine
By Clare Hawkins, M.D., M.Sc.
TAFP President, 2013-2014Do you ever think that your day is going slowly? Do the mundane features of patient care make you feel slow? Or perhaps, by contrast, you feel it is going too fast, like that proverbial hamster on the treadmill.
My treadmill involves dealing with difficult patients, paperwork requests, and the idiosyncrasies of the electronic health record. In spite of the speed, however, I don’t always feel efficient. Even when I feel I can complete a patient encounter quickly, this does not feel like a triumph. The speed comes at the expense of a lack of connection with the patient, or less fulfilment with medicine than I had expected.
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Making the grade
By Clare Hawkins, M.D., M.Sc.
TAFP President, 2013-2014As I reviewed my children’s report cards recently, I found myself proud of their achievements. I also began reflecting on whether these grades were an accurate reflection of their past performance or current abilities. I know they worked very hard and deserved credit, and that being graded was a great deal of stress for them. Ultimately I found myself being thankful that I was no longer in the educational system where I was frequently under pressure to perform and be graded by teachers and professors. Then I stopped myself and considered the last report I received from a health plan which outlined my performance as a doctor. Unfair! How do they know how good I am? They don’t really know how well I perform.
Increasingly we physicians find that health plans, governments, or employers are evaluating the care that we provide. Do we know what they are measuring? Will it affect my payments? Will it affect my employment?
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Let’s work together to keep our Academy and our specialty strong in a time of great change
An excerpt from the 2013 incoming presidential address
By Clare Hawkins, M.D., M.Sc.
TAFP President, 2013-2014Change is inevitable. We can change or die. As family physicians, we can lead the coming change in our health care delivery system.
Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
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