While starting to take on some of the tasks of the executive council over the past few months, I have a new appreciation for the tireless efforts of our current Board Chair, Dr. Jim Goodyear, and his predecessor and my original mentor on the board, Dr. Chuck Cutler.
I began my work in the PMS with the Young Physicians Section, and although at age 44 I technically no longer qualify, my personal definition of a young physician gets surprisingly older with each passing year!
If we don’t stay relevant to our younger members, I fear we are going to lose them.
One of my goals for this year is to increase involvement of young physicians with the MCMS. Our challenge is to use technology to minimize the impact on their time, while maximizing communication and participation.
Young physicians today belong to a profession that has changed greatly since the founding of this society in 1847.
Men and women are now about equally represented, and we are inclusive of all race, religion and ethnicity, so that the medical profession for the most part mirrors our diverse population. Changing professional and home life responsibility, including shared parental duties and dual-career couples, technological change, and expectations of increased leisure time, demand that we make efficient use of our members’ valuable time and utilize technology such as the Internet, to minimize the time spent in formal meetings.
Our profession is based on the nobility of public service, a higher calling, a duty to serve that supersedes the capitalist profit motive. This is also true for politicians, and we are fortunate to have several representatives of that profession here tonight.
Lawyers also have a higher calling… but I promised not to pick on the lawyers tonight - some of my favorite people are attorneys, including my only brother.
Through the work of the medico-legal committee, we are slowly turning over a new leaf in doctor-lawyer relations.
Here we must recognize the work of Dr. Mark Lopatin and the Medical Mediation Task Force, who are helping to develop a ground-breaking pilot project in medical mediation as an alternative to lawsuits at Abington Hospital.
We face a future that almost certainly will include cost controls and rationing of care under the entitlement programs of Medicare and Medicaid.
Let’s do all we can to ensure these decisions are value-based, following the pioneering work of Drs. Gary and Melissa Brown. When I talk to my colleagues across the region, I have seen way too much finger pointing, and I must admit I have been guilty myself on occasion.
You know the refrain “someone should do something about that”, when talking about the medical liability crisis,
below market insurance reimbursements, monopolistic HMO behavior,
caring for the uninsured,
public health problems, and more.
“Someone should do something about that!”
I challenge each of us to BE THAT SOMEONE!
Forgive me for paraphrasing JFK when I say: Ask not what organized medicine has done FOR you, ask what YOU can do for organized medicine.
I also can’t tell you how many times I have heard “I’m not a member of the PMS, (or the AMA) because they’re not DOING anything about our problems”. My response is that the medical society is not a group of people sitting in Harrisburg, or Chicago, or D.C., it is all of us. We have a duty to get involved and help FIX the problems.
I believe that a physicians approach to treating disease needs to be replicated in the way we confront political, social and economic problems that present obstacles to patient care.
None of us are very comfortable telling a patient “go home, there is nothing I can do”, so why do we accept pessimistic resignation to other issues affecting our practice?
The late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once said “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Thank you for your kind attention, we are looking forward to a great year. Thanks especially to Mark Austerberry and Chris McCloskey, without whom this organization would unravel, and to all my fellow board members for your unwavering support and encouragement.
Finally, I have to thank the very special people right here at the front table: my wife Barbara, with my son Mark and daughter Lauren, my business partners Dr. Joe Pizzano and Dr. Ed Keates, and our office manager Marie, for their patience and support while we juggle our multitude of commitments and schedules that allow me to continue to work with the MCMS.
Mark F. Pyfer, MD,
President, Montgomery County (PA) Medical Society
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