Posted on 07.12.10 by Executive Vice President Susan Hogeland, CAE 

What summer slow down?  We haven't seen any summer slowdown.

Meeting with New UC Riverside Dean

Last week President Jack Chou and I were joined by chair of CAFP's Committee on Continuing Professional Development Geoff Leung, MD and Executive Director of the Riverside County Medical Association, Dolores Green at a meeting with G. Richard Olds, MD, MACP, the new Vice Chancellor, Health Affairs and Dean, School of Medicine, University of California Riverside.  Dean Olds was being shadowed that day by two medical students who must have been learning a lot about policy and workforce issues!

We were meeting with the Dean not only to welcome him to his new position, but also to reinforce CAFP's initial support of the new medical school based on its stated mission of improving access to primary care in the Inland Empire.  Dean Olds is in the process of recruiting assistant deans and others and who share the school's vision, an especially important issue with regard to the admissions process and we are hopeful there will be excellent representation of family medicine among them. 

The Dean spoke passionately about the service-based learning experience he wants for medical students and said he intends to graduate a ratio of 50:50 primary care to subspecialists from the school; CAFP noted that family medicine is the only pure primary care specialty and that large percentages of internists and pediatricians go on to subspecialize as "ologists." 

Paul Grundy, MD Show About to Start

Today kicks off the start of an intensive week of meetings featuring Paul Grundy, MD, MPH, IBM's Global Director of Health Care Transformation.  As I outlined last week, first there'll be a meeting at UC San Francisco hosted by Kevin Grumbach, MD, a roundtable on Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) to discuss related healthcare workforce policy issues.  Tuesday the 13^th at o'dark-thirty, Leah Newkirk, CAFP's Director of Health Policy, and I will drive Dr. Grundy to Sacramento for a meeting with representatives of Sutter Health facilitated by our own Carla Kakutani.  Then, it's back to San Francisco for a meeting with Brown and Toland Medical Group, then with Meredith Matthews, MD, Medical Director for Blue Shield of California.   All this will be even more fun for Dr. Grundy because it's his birthday!  On Wednesday, we drive down to Fresno for a 5 pm meeting entitled:  "Health Care Reform Impact to Value Based Plan Design and Primary Care:  The Potential for Improving Health and Reducing Costs in Fresno" and a discussion about the potential for a PCMH demonstration project in the city and county of Fresno.  That'll be it for us (well, there is the long drive home), but Dr. Grundy will go on to similar meetings in Southern California for the rest of the week.  I'm really not sure how he does it - he truly is the Energizer Bunny for PCMH advocacy.  Speaking of which, Adam Francis on our staff suggests this is one of the best presentations for patients about what a PCMH is; take a look:  http://www.pcpcc.net/content/emmi

Vaccines Media Attention Keeps Coming

Thanks to the hard work by our lobbying staff, a bill co-sponsored by CAFP, AB2093, to improve how physicians are paid for the cost of purchasing, storing and administering vaccines was passed out of the Senate Health Committee on June 30.  Part of the reason was the excellent press on the issue generated by CAFP, and even after the vote, the coverage continued.   For example, Dr. Patricia Samuelson was quoted here:  http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/Vaccines/21072  and Dr. Marcia McKay was interviewed by National Public Radio reporter Kelly Weiss last week.

President Chou Visits CAFP

CAFP President Jack Chou spent three hours at Academy headquarters on July 6, meeting with the staff to review the Board agenda for July 10 and the 2010-12 Strategic Plan progress report.  Jack was well informed for the discussion on the plan at the Board meeting on Saturday in Los Angeles.

Board Meets in LA

The CAFP Board held its summer meeting at the Westin at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday.  Leading off was a report from Taejoon Ahn, Chair of CAFP's Legislative Affairs Committee, and Tom Riley, CAFP Legislative Advocate.  There wasn't much good news about resolution of California's budget crisis, but the Board was pleased to hear about the progress of CAFP's Patient Centered Medical Home definition bill, AB1542, and the above-mentioned AB2093.  The Board also approved a recommendation from the Audit Committee to accept the 2009 audit and management letter from Bregante + Company after hearing an extensive report on the state of CAFP finances, which is good!  CAFP received an "unqualified" opinion from the auditors - another good thing.  The Board will review the IRS required Form 990 in time for submission to the IRS in August.