Posted on 06.21.10 by Susan Hogeland, CAE

Can things come at us any faster or more furiously?  CAFP is faced with an abundance of riches - so many opportunities, so little time.  Your staff has operated at what seems like warp speed the last six weeks.

What's on our plates?  First and foremost:  Sacramento.  While trying to stay abreast and have input into the continuing budget negotiations, we've also been working on AB1542, legislation to establish a definition for Patient Centered Medical Home.  Legislative Advocate Tom Riley, Director of Health Policy Leah Newkirk and Legislative Assistant Adam Francis met with Assemblyman Dave Jones and others on June 17 to work out challenges to the bill, which will be heard in committee on June 30.

CAFP has also taken a lead role in seeking to convince the State of California to at least submit a Letter of Intent in response to Medicare's proposed Multipayer PCMH Demonstration project request for proposal.  We have been working to identify important stakeholders, including those who might be willing to devote resources to help the state prepare a proposal - CAFP among them.  The Letter of Intent must be submitted by 30 June, so this is a high priority.

Shelly Rodrigues will represent us at a summit among in Chicago on potential educational initiatives on alcohol abuse and obesity the first three days of this week.

CAFP issued a letter of support for Donald Berwick, MD to be Director of Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Dr. Berwick is head of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and highly qualified.  He also has AAFP support.

We are finalizing our 2009 Audit and presenting it to the Board of Directors on July 10 - your Audit Committee, chaired by Secretary-Treasurer Del Morris, met Tuesday evening, June 15 to discuss the draft financial review and management letters with representatives of Bregante + Co.  The Audit Committee approved sending the documents on to the CAFP Board with an "adopt" recommendation. 

We continue to organize another visit to California by IBM's Paul Grundy, MD, MPH, including a roundtable on Patient Centered Medical Home and California's health care workforce challenges at UCSF, in collaboration with Kevin Grumbach, MD; meeting with representatives of the Sutter Health Plan and Brown and Toland Medical Group; and another meeting with the Fresno Unified School District to discuss the potential there for a PCMH demonstration project.

CAFP joined a coalition encouraging that a "Health and the Great Outdoors National Town Hall" sponsored by the White House be held to promote exercise and outdoors activity.  June has been officially proclaimed as Great Outdoors Month by the President and all 50 governors and First Lady Michelle Obama launched her promotion for getting kids active outdoors on June 1 - see her website: http://www.letsmove.gov/outside/index.html A coalition of physicians and leaders from non-profit public land organizations are behind this effort, with San Francisco member Daphne Miller asking that CAFP sign on.  The coalition's goal is two-fold:  1) to expand resources for mental and physical health by creating formal institutional links between health care and public lands; and  2) to create a new paradigm to fund the recreation infrastructure on public lands which supports healthy activities.

We will be working on a resolution passed by our 2010 Congress of Delegates calling on AAFP to rescind its contract with The Coca Cola Company for support of the AAFP patient-facing website, www.familydoctor.org (NOT to be confused with CAFP's website, www.familydocs.org!).  Our Delegation to AAFP will meet Tuesday the 22^nd by conference call to discuss how other states are approaching the issue after our delegation to the National Congress of Special Constituencies was disappointed in its effort to pass the same resolution.

Our C-4 Capacity Building Collaborative will meet on Wednesday, July 23 for an informative session with member Michael Zimmerman about managing patient panels and risk stratification.  C-4 is CAFP's project to determine whether we can help family physicians improve their internal processes and financial viability to create capacity for quality improvement and practice re-design/transformation into the Patient Centered Medical Home.

Last week we submitted two grant applications to The Physicians' Foundation for Health Systems Excellence - one for a toolkit to assist physicians in analyzing whether to apply for Medicare or Medi-Cal funds to support health information technology efforts to achieve meaningful use, as well as to determine what, if any, services might be obtained from Regional Extension Centers, Local Extension Centers and Service Providers - and the other for leadership training for CME faculty.  We're keeping our fingers crossed.