Contents tagged with presidents letter
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President's Letter
A celebration of family medicine: How Disney literally saved my life
By Javier “Jake” Margo Jr., MD
TAFP PresidentA couple of summers ago, on a rare day off, I was working on a detailed email advocating to keep the electricity on for our not-for-profit community center, when my son James, who was 7 at the time, walked into my office — or as my Harry-Potter-centric friends have dubbed it, the “Room of Requirement,” because anything you need can be found there.
He and I were the only two people in the house since my daughter, Ella, was at Girl Scout Camp and my wife, Lisa, was at work. He had given up trying to teach the cats play catch when he walked in, stopped just short of my elbow, stared silently with his big brown eyes, and asked, “Daddy, will you play with me?”
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President's Letter
Accomplishments and challenges in a busy year
By Rebecca Hart, MD
TAFP PresidentGreetings colleagues. As I reflect on this year so far, it’s been a whirlwind! We have seen major accomplishments, but huge challenges lie ahead. Let’s recap where we are on several issues.
Accomplishments: The 86th Texas legislative session ended with a few significant wins for family medicine. We retained our funding for the Family Medicine Preceptorship Program and Physician Education Loan Repayment Program. We successfully protected funding levels for existing residency training programs while the Legislature increased graduate medical education expansion funding by $60 million. And once again, we defeated challenges to our scope of practice and turned back efforts by nurse practitioners to practice medicine independently.
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President's Letter
Mergers, acquisitions, and the family physician — where do we fit in?
By Rebecca Hart, MD
TAFP PresidentRecently I have been hearing a lot of angst from colleagues about all the impending mergers of large retail corporations, insurance companies, and pharmacies starting up primary care clinics complete with urgent care, lab, imaging, and other amenities. My colleagues are gnashing their teeth wondering if they’ll be forced out of business by yet another corporate takeover. First the hospitals, now this.
The CVS/Aetna partnership brings us HealthHUBs in CVS stores, a health care “destination” with nurse practitioners at the helm and a “care concierge” to direct the patient to CVS services. They are associated with physicians only as reviewers of the NPs, because this is required by Texas law. They are not even on the payroll, but act as consultants — a very distant role. These physicians are not involved in directing the company or directing the primary care at all.
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President's Letter
Strong family physicians, strong medicine, strong patients
An excerpt from the inaugural speech of the new TAFP PresidentBy Rebecca Hart, MD
TAFP PresidentI am so humbled, joyful and happy to begin work as your new president. Thank you for electing me and giving me this opportunity to serve you. I hope you join me this year in working harder than ever to keep our profession strong, our physicians inspired, and our workforce increasing.
When I began my career as a resident in Family Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine Residency Program in 1988, I was naïve. I knew nothing of the big issues that would face me in my future as a family physician. I knew nothing of CMS, preauthorization, payment reform, physician shortages, mid-levels, MACRA, EHRs, quality incentive programs, or Medicare Advantage plans. Heck, most of these things didn’t even exist back then! I knew only that I loved every rotation back in medical school, so family medicine was right for me. I wanted to be a full-scope family doctor, deliver babies, and work in a small town in Texas to make a difference in people’s lives.
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Chewing on a big fat wad of gum
By Janet Hurley, MD
Changes in health care have been fast and furious in the last several years. The advent of MACRA created the need to prepare for MIPS and APMs, and more robustly report on quality and cost. There is an ongoing desire for interoperability and EMR modifications requiring more “clicks” than we would like. Many physicians have added new types of team members to their practices, such as social workers, nurse navigators, or care coordinators to reach out to patients in new creative ways.
Some of this has been good for patients, and some of it possibly not. Some days it feels like physicians are chewing a big fat wad of gum, and feeling choked.
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On the shoulders of giants
An excerpt from the inaugural speech of the new TAFP President
By Janet Hurley, MD
Greetings friends, colleagues, staff, and family members. It is my honor to stand before you as our next TAFP President. As I watched Dr. Elliott receive this medallion last year, I thought of all of the leaders in the past who have worn this medallion before us. I am honored to receive the responsibility today, acknowledging that this medallion has been around the necks of many giants along the way before me.
My first TAFP meeting was in the summer of 1997, ironically also here in Galveston. I was a student, wandering lost around the conference hotel. I was impressed to feel so welcomed by the TAFP staff and physician leaders, like Dr. David Schneider, who was among my first Academy mentors.
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President's Letter
What kind of system do we want?
By Tricia Elliott, MD
In his seminal book “The Signal and the Noise,” renowned statistician, Nate Silver, examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish the truth — the signal— from the noise, which he describes as a universe of ever-increasing information, relatively little of which is useful.
Any candid observer of the now nearly decade-long effort to reform our health care system will readily admit that the health care debate we’ve been engaged in has generated a lot of noise and useless information for political gain. Our elected leaders, on both sides of the aisle, have been busy creating this noise and are now trapped in a political vise of their own making. They’ve sadly left the public with a binary choice of whose health care solution is better, that of the Republicans or the Democrats.
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President's Letter
Learning to lead
By Tricia Elliott, MD
Greetings Colleagues. I recently had the pleasure of attending AAFP’s National Conference of Constituency Leaders and the Annual Chapter Leader Forum in Kansas City, Missouri, two conferences packed with leadership training and opportunities. As I was returning home, I couldn’t help but reflect on how lucky we are to be part of such an active and engaged community of family doctors. To witness the energy and enthusiasm for learning and networking, to take part in lively debates, and to watch colleagues collaborate to craft policy ideas — the weekend was truly a joy.
Our Texas chapter was well represented throughout both conferences. We had 17 members attending, seven of whom were first-time attendees to NCCL and ACLF. Again this year, Texas sent a full delegation to NCCL, which means we had an official representative for each of the convening member constituencies: new physicians; women physicians; international medical graduates; minority physicians; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender physicians.
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