Thanks to all of the delegates and members of the Medical Society of New Jersey for electing me as the 222nd President. Thank you all for taking the time from your busy schedules and multiple obligations to be here for our advocacy conference and annual meeting. We are counting on you all to be at the Gala gala next Saturday night at the Parsippany Hilton.
In the years that I have served MSNJ there have been many excellent leaders and board members. Our immediate past President Dr Schulze did a phenomenal job.
Thanks to everyone here today, as well as our excellent staff, led by Larry Downs, our executive director. You have made our accomplishments possible.
Thanks to my wife, Renie, and my sons for their patience with numerous years of meetings, for their advice, their support, and their encouragement.
As we know, healthcare and the practice of medicine are undergoing a massive transformation. No one knows what it will truly be when this has been completed. This transformation has led to very challenging times for all of us.
Considering this transformation we have our “top ten 10 goals for the year”:
1. Protecting our patient’s’ health
2. Optimizing public health
3. Increasing our advocacy efforts for public health
4. Protecting our patients’ ability to receive high quality, humanistic, patient centered care, including needed medications
5. Improving payments for our services commensurate with our , expertise, increasing expenses, inflation, and increasing regulations
6. Repealing Fixing the flawed Medicare SGR payment formula problem
7. Dealing with the ICD-10 issue
8. Many other states have recognized that in order to attract physicians it is important to improve the “liability landscape.” In New Jersey, especially with the Accountable Care Act, there are many patients searching for physicians. Our legislators and regulators should recognize that in order to attract physicians, nonetheless, the best and the brightest physicians, we will need to improve this as well as other factors. Working to achieve tort reform in New Jersey. Twenty-four states already have tort reform. We should be the next state.
9. Changing Maintenance Of of Certification from its current form and developing our own alternative quality standards.
10. Establishing the new “Medical Society of New Jersey Physician Quality Standard.” There will be a seal for this standard which will be proudly displayed by all physicians who meet this standard. Perhaps, it will even be displayed on billboards so everyone is aware of the MSNJ Physician Quality Standard.
Today, I am appointing an ad hoc committee to develop the criteria for a proposal for the new MSNJ Physician Quality Standard. Once this new standard is established we will send this out to inform patients, the healthcare community, and the media. It will be a sign of our commitment for quality medicine and concern for our patients.
In conclusion, we can only deal with the numerous challenges in healthcare today by working together.
The total impact of these challenges, outweighs our differences. – Whether you are in primary care or a specialist, private practice, working in a group, or as an employee,
working together will optimize our results.
Together we are stronger, together we will succeed.