Executive Director's Message

RETURN ON YOUR INVESTMENT

If ever there was a year that demonstrated the value of your membership in the Polk County Medical Society it is this year. The impact of the PCMS has directly and positively affected your practice of medicine.   

Your PCMS President, Dr. Tom Becker, members of the PCMS board, PCMS Legislative Committee and I have been busy advocating in legislative and regulatory meetings that could, or would affect you, your practice, and your patients. 

I attended the Iowa Board of Medical Examiners (IBME) meeting in April and heard a presentation on PreP 4 Safety by the President of the Citizen Advocacy Center (CAC), a non profit organization in Washington, DC. This PreP 4 Patient Safety program is a training, research and support network for public representatives of professional and other regulatory boards. The main purpose is to serve as a practitioner remediation and enhancement partnership program between state professional licensing boards and hospitals that employ or credential such professionals. The proposed PreP 4 Safety is focused on physicians and nurses. The hospitals, medical and nursing boards serve as safety advocates. They provide a means where practitioners identified as having deficits in knowledge, skills or abilities remain in the work setting and receive remediation to improve patient care and enhance public protection. The IBME made no decision on the program.   

Dr. Steve Eckstat and I, board members of the Health Access Partnership, along with hospital administrators and others are meeting regularly to deal with the uninsured.  The HAP board is developing the mission and goals of this group. PCMS continues to work on the Specialty Referral part of this project for all free clinics. 

PCMS board members and I have met with the Polk County Board of Supervisors to discuss the Medical Director position of the Polk County Department of Health.

The PCMS has attended meetings by the Iowa Board of Chiropractic Examiners who are developing a policy that would allow Chiropractors to perform needle EMG. PCMS is against this policy as there is grave concern for the patients. Six neurologists have sent letters of concern on PCMS’ behalf to the Chiropractic Board and to the Iowa Board of Medical Examiners expressing concern about patient safety. This policy will be discussed at the Chiropractic Board meeting in July.

The PCMS attended meetings with the Physician Assistant Board and with the Iowa Administrative Rules committee to discuss PA and physician supervision. After many meetings with PCMS, IBME, and other medical groups a rule was negotiated that the PA must notify the physician supervisor prior to working under the doctor’s supervision.

PCMS members David Drake, D.O. and John Nanson, M.D. serve on the Polk County Jail Health Committee that meets regularly to deal with inmate issues.

And then there is the Iowa Legislature. This year many of your colleagues and I were up at the state Capitol addressing bills that most definitely would affect your practice. We have worked with the Medicaid issue, increase in cigarette taxes, and most recently an internet drug repository that would record physicians prescribing and patient’s prescriptions without the patients’ knowledge. The PCMS spent many hours with Iowa legislators informing them of the impact this bill would have on the practice and cost of medicine, and privacy of the citizens of Iowa. 

The PCMS is facilitating a Medicare Regional Meeting in Des Moines for all doctors, their office staff, and all medical associations to discuss any Medicare issues or concerns they may have with the Medical Director of the Regional Office, May 19th. 

PCMS members and I are participating with a coalition of health care providers to begin to explore the multitude of issues surrounding health information technology for physician’s practices in Iowa.

The work on the national level continues as we meet in June with Senators Harkin, Grassley, and Representative Boswell to address the need to permanently fix the Medicare formula. In September on the 20^th and 21^st PCMS members will participate in our Washington, D. C. Fly-In where we will again meet with our Iowa Congressional Delegation to further the Medicare work on your behalf. 

You can see from the work we are doing that the return on your membership dollar is very significant. While advocating for your practice we continue to respond to the public on calls for education, training and background information on doctors, and calls for referrals daily. The challenges of medicine are tremendous and the PCMS is here to represent you and your patients.