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Governor's Report
Dr. Pennington's Summary 2002
Executive Summary of Governor's Report 2002
ACS has established a PAC to allow additional advocacy efforts on behalf of all surgeons including sub specialists. Voluntary contributions can be made separately to this PAC at the time of dues payment. No dues money will be used for the PAC.
The ACS dues increase, delayed last year after 9/11, will go into effect in 2003. Domestic fellows dues will increase from $375 to $ 440 annually. The College will be spending additional funds for clinical studies, education and advocacy.
The advocacy effort by individual Fellows is made easier by the Capwiz feature on the College’s Website www.facs.org. It allows the user to click on their state, locate their legislators and send them a preprepared e-mail or to send a personally prepared e-mail on surgical/medical issues. This will be expanded to allow state level use in the next year. Any e-mail sent to legislators is copied to the Washington ACS office.
The College is very concerned about the limitation on resident work hours, and also the diminished interest shown by medical students in surgery. These factors, combined with lengthened residencies, increased surgical sub specialization and a trend for earlier retirement make manpower shortages in surgery likely within 5 to 10 years.
There will be an increased effort to aid the Chapters with programming and educational help. Additional monitoring and measuring of Chapter performance is planned. The Chapter will become a focus for state level political effort, legislator contact (when Congress is out of session), and even for clinical trials.
The College will be increasingly working with other medical organizations in alliances to further surgical causes. The alliances with the AMA, SAGES, ASGS and others will be enhanced.
The College has developed a relationship with The Doctors Company for malpractice coverage for Fellows in states with difficult coverage situations. This is in place now.
Unless Congress enacts legislation very soon, further Medicare fee decreases for next year will be in the 5% range. Legislators understand the formula problem and its impact, but Medicare recipient drug costs are considered a higher priority in Congress. This will not change until physician access becomes limited by diminished reimbursement.
Tort reform and liability are major issues that the ACS is working with legislators to understand also.
The College’s Office of Evidence-based Surgery will be spearheaded by Dr. R. Scott Jones and will focus on developing standards of surgical care to be used nationally. Additionally the College is moving forward with its efforts to establish competency guidelines with the American Board of Surgery. Patient safety emphasis by the Institute of Medicine has made this a high profile effort.
The ACS has engaged a consultant to determine how the “branding” of the ACS can be used to aid Fellows and the ACS.
Submmitted by Robert Pennington, M.D., FACS, Governor Indiana
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