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Notes for Annual Session & Primary Care Summit attendees
posted 11.10.15
Thank you for registering for TAFP’s 2015 Annual Session & Primary Care Summit. We look forward to seeing you later this week at The Woodlands Waterway Marriott. Below is some information about the conference. If you have any questions or concerns, please call (512) 329-8666 or email tafp@tafp.org.
TAFP Registration Desk Location and Hours
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Wednesday, Nov. 11 | 12 - 6 p.m. | Waterway Ballroom Foyer
Thursday, Nov. 12 | 7 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. | Waterway Ballroom Foyer | 3:30 p.m. - 7 p.m. | Town Center Foyer
Friday, Nov. 13 | 6:30 a.m. - 6 p.m. | Town Center Foyer
Saturday, Nov. 14 | 6:30 a.m. - 6 p.m. | Town Center Foyer
Sunday, Nov. 15 | 6:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. | Town Center Foyer -
Why I precept medical students
By Adrian N. Billings, MD, PhD, FAAFP
Why do I precept medical students? Luckily, I ask myself this question less and less frequently because I enjoy having these junior colleagues with me, especially at 2 a.m. while delivering babies. However, I recently explored this question with some reflection on my past seven years of precepting around 100 medical students and 20 resident physicians in my practice.
Unequivocally, the answer to the preceding question is that I precept medical students because my patients receive better care if I have a medical student working with me. It does not matter how fresh a medical student is into clinical training, two sets of eyes and two sets of brains examining and thinking about a patient’s problem are better than my own brain by itself. I have had preclinical students consider and make diagnoses that I have not been able to. Even if the students don’t make the correct diagnosis and they hear zebra hoofbeats instead of horse hoofbeats, this mental task causes me to consider a broader and more thorough differential diagnosis with their valuable input. I consider it an honor and privilege to be entrusted by medical schools with these young student physicians.
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Time to step up to the plate
By Dale Ragle, MD
TAFP President, 2014-2015This will be my final letter to you as TAFP president. It has been an honor and privilege to serve you and our outstanding organization.
This is an exciting and challenging time for family medicine. Health care reform and the sustainable growth rate repeal are expanding the rolls of the insured and will transition us from a volume-based payment system to a quality-based system over the next several years. Some analysts are concerned that increasing the number of insured may strain our health care system in the absence of increasing the physician workforce. While increasing the insurance rolls will generally increase access to care in the younger population, the resultant strain on our health care system could make it more difficult for certain vulnerable populations, such as elderly patients already on Medicare, to access the health system. This effect could be magnified in our state, which has about a 20 percent uninsured rate, unfortunately the highest in the nation.
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