2012: A YEAR IN THE MAKING

a year in the making. With each year that passes our challenges continue to grow. Our desire to make a better working environment gets energized! Our desks get cleaned up; our outlook at closing a difficultyear and looking for a better one is admirable.

So this year we need to get the job we are all waiting for done: GETTING INVOLVED. Getting involved means being a part of our society, our community, our county, our state and our country. Therefore, at any level you want to do it, let’s do it together. All of us have many different commitments to family, work and profession. Let’s make this year a year of spending time to have a direct impact on your future. Let’s start directing traffic, let’s ask and tell our legislators why pro-medicine and pro-physician legislation is the right way to vote; not just because we take care of their ill’s and their medical problems, but because it is the right way to care for our citizens of the State of Florida.

This is an important year to deal with issues such as sovereign immunity for physicians treating patients in the emergency room. It is the year to enact car seat safety measures for children ages 4 to 8. We are not considering increasing the scope of practicing medicine by other practitioners except for DO’s and MD’s; we continue to oppose expansion of the Medicaid Pilot Program to all counties in Florida; and to ensure “dual eligibles” (patients covered by both Medicaid and Medicare) are not included in the Medicaid Pilot Program. These and many more are issues that the DCMA, with the force of the FMA, will be dealing with in Tallahassee this legislative session.

Yes, we have an economic crisis that our Governor and our legislators have to work on to balance the budget, but achieving this balance needs to be fair, reasonable and sensible. We have to make it practical and we have to make it feasible. So continue practicing good medicine, join us to increase our strength and our representation and together we will succeed in our mission to care for our patients and practice with dignity and respect.