Posted on 02.08.10 by Executive Vice President Susan Hogeland, CAE

This is a very busy week for staff on many fronts.  For the next two days, I will be with President-elect Jack Chou at the American Society of Association Executives Chief Elected Officer/Chief Staff Officer Symposium, an exercise every president-elect of the Academy but one has undertaken with me over the past eighteen years.  The year we missed was due only to budgetary concerns when we were in a federal antitrust lawsuit!  Jack and I will have an opportunity to learn one another's leadership styles and how best to work together - and it's a great chance to get to know one another even better.  For the last several years, executive directors and presidents-elect from other Western States chapters have also attended this meeting, so it's also an opportunity to network.

What promised to be our second very successful medical home summit for residency program directors and chief residents kicked off today in Los Angeles.  Pre-registration was more than 100!  AAFP past president and PCMH advocate Rich Roberts is keynote again, as he was at the first summit in 2008, and CAFP President Tom Bent is emcee. Sandy Newman, Dasha Sakharova, Shelly Rodrigues and Jane Cho are staffing the summit, which is combined with our Residents in Action media and legislative training program.  We're grateful to Northern and Southern Permanente Medical Groups for co-sponsoring and funding, and to Pfizer for an unrestricted grant.

Wednesday, Shelly Rodrigues and Cynthia Kear head to a confab in Wisconsin of the nine CS2day partners to plot and plan the next iteration of that very successful continuing professional development collaboration.  Pfizer has funded a second generation of the program, and the group is seeking additional funding as well. 

Legislative Advocate Tom Riley and Legislative Assistant Adam Francis have their hands full as well with the on-going battle in Sacramento over planned tremendous cuts in health care funding, including, potentially, elimination of Healthy Families.  Governor Schwarzenegger had bad news from Washington last week when the President's budget was released - only $1.5 billion of the requested $6.9 billion will be available to California.  Tom and Adam were also busy last week helping prepare testimony for Sacramento Residency Program Director Marion Leff, MD and CAFP Foundation Trustee Kiki Nocella, PhD for the Health Care Workforce Access Select Committee hearing led by Assemblymember Ed Hernandez, OD (D - Baldwin Park).

We're very happy to announce that not only will we be hosting AAFP President Lori Heim at the upcoming March 6-8 CAFP Congress of Delegates in Sacramento, we will also have Paul Grundy, MD, IBM's Global Director of Healthcare Transformation and President of the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative at the meeting to speak about the business perspective on the patient centered medical home.  Dr. Grundy also hopes to speak at a CAFP-hosted session with legislative staff about the patient centered medical home.  We're delighted both Dr. Heim and Dr. Grundy will be with us, and invite interested members - delegates and alternates or not - to attend.

As I mentioned last week, the CAFP Board of Directors met by conference call on February 3 and most of the agenda was consumed with a discussion of the report from the Single Payer Task Force that resulted from adoption of a resolution at last year's Congress asking for a complete analysis of SB810, Senator Mark Leno's (D-SF) single payer health care reform bill.  The Board approved some new additions to our principles for health care reform overall, and a lengthy set of recommended amendments to the legislation, and authorized representatives of the Academy to meet and discuss the amendments with Senator Leno.  The Board did not endorse single payer at this time, however.