NPA President, Dr. Valerie Arkoosh spoke to the Pennsylvania HCAN group on July 21. She provided an overview of the changes that health care reform will bring to Pennsylvania. Check out this piece on her speech.

Online registration for the Physicians Leadership Institute: Building Coalitions for Patient Advocacy (March 14th-17th in Houston, TX) continues until March 8th! Don’t miss the opportunity to spend a solid weekend with like-minded physicians, those who care passionately about integrity in medicine, health access issues, and creative collaboration in moving forward towards a healthier America. This will truly be an inspiring meeting of the minds (and that means you!)

We are even sponsoring CME credit for an unprecedented leadership institute called The Unbranded Doctor! (separate registration is required for this course)

Check out the agenda, post the flyers at your institution or clinic, talk to your friends, register ASAP!

And for you social networking butterflies, join the National Physicians Alliance group on Facebook.

“We are one. If we don’t know it, we will learn it the hard way.”
– Bayard Rustin, Civil Rights Activist, Organizer of the 1963 March on Washington

Now is the time to join the National Physicians Alliance at its meeting in Houston, TX. If you have never been to an NPA event, you are truly missing out. Missing out on energy. You may arrive tired and disheartened, but you leave energized and full of momentum to make a difference. Whether you would like to join in NPA’s efforts to ensure the availability of quality health care to all in the US or to explore how big business looks to compromise your practice as a physician and the health of your patients, you can find it with this group.

Certainly, one of the best things about a National Physicians Alliance meeting is finding like minded physicians who are in the struggle to maintain the integrity of our profession, and who strive daily to put their patients first. That is what excites me. It is an exciting time in our country and everyone is talking about change. Now is the time for physicians like us to make a stand and be heard.

When I leave an NPA meeting I truly get what Bayard Rustin was saying. We are truly one!

(link to register for the NPA meeting)

…where we’re holding our National Physicians Alliance board and committees meeting!  We’re in Washington, DC, about 30 of us, deliberating on how to best advocate for our patients and how to best engage physicians on important health issues.  The ideas are flowing, as is the caffeine.  More from DC as we continue to discuss how to build our robust and growing organization!

A friend once said — technology only works if there’s a huge loving idea behind it. Well here’s the idea — the first multi-author blog of a physicians’ organization — committed to facilitating communication and productive discussion among physicians and the public on the issues that the National Physicians Alliance (NPA) is committed to addressing. That’s both huge and loving, and we’re excited about it.

Of note — contributors to this blog consist of a diverse group of physicians and guest writers. As a result, please note that the views presented here are those of the individual authors’ and are not necessarily representative of the organization.

More information on this organization’s mission and issues can be found at the official website of the National Physicians Alliance.

Please feel free to comment on posts, as discussion is encouraged. Comments may be moderated to avoid spam and offensive statements. Thanks for joining us in this online journey, and please share this blog with others!

Welcome to NPA Blog. Here you will find a community of physicians who have chosen to look back and look forward. Doctors who long for the return of the values of our profession of service, itegrity and advocacy with the modern spin of an organization that utilizes the tools and ideas of modern times. At the National Physicians Alliance we are striving to create an organization that is nimble,transparent and democratic. To do this we need all of you. There are over 800,000 physicians in this country. Even the largest of our organizations represents a small fraction of those docs. We need a voice. The country needs us to step up as advocates and defenders of what is best, not for doctors, but for the health of our people.

At the NPA we are all here for a dream, a wish, a vision carried over from our days as students.

We need a home.

A place were we can reach across specialties and interests and find each other.

A place we can find support, friendship and the synergy that comes when people of good hearts and altruistic motives come together and make magic.

We need it to fight the cynicism and despair of our times and our world that taints our work.

We need it to nurture young physicians in their ideals and activism.

We need a place to celebrate each other and the miracles large and small you accomplish every day.

We need a place we can go where we can be reminded what an amazing honor and privilege it is to have another put their life in your hands, share their vulnerabilities and nakedness and witness the beginning and end of their time on earth.

Then there is the other reason for the NPA.

Somehow our profession has lost its way.

The obsession with the business of medicine has, like Harry Potters Dementors, sucked the joy out of our jobs.

I believe this is at the core of the void so many of us feel about our work.

For decades now, the focus on financial issues, in particular by the AMA, to the near exclusion of all others, at least in the political and press worlds, has contributed mightily to the loss of trust the public has with our profession.

Our patients question our motives when it comes to decisions about their care and rightly so.

Did we choose that drug because we just had a free lunch or because it is the cheapest and best medicine for that person?

We all swear we are NOT influenced by these things, but there are rafts of research showing it is, in fact, so and ask yourself, if a pharmaceutical company would really spend the equivalent of $12,000 a year per physician on these things if it wasn?t effective.

Today we are no longer this country?s most trusted profession. We now trail nurses and pharmacists.

Now,I’m not so naive as to believe issues of money and financing medical care can be ignored.

Not at least in this country.

Medicine is a business and a big one.

Billions of dollars are being spent and made in this industry annually.

Lest you think I?m a total socialist, I’ll tell you I feel entitled to a piece of that action.

I have sacrificed a good part of my life; probably health and for sure, well being on this alter of medicine.

I want a good life.

I?m grateful we have strong trade associations working on these issues on my behalf, for my compensation and my autonomy to practice without being micromanaged by non-medical entities.

The question I often ask myself however is, how much is enough and at what cost does it come?

The problem is that something is missing. We are missing a different voice in the public discourse.

One that focuses not on issues of physician self interest but one that speaks for physicians as advocates for health.

Many of our professional organizations have become so distracted or politically beholden they have become silent on issues that so clearly scream for a physician voice.

Perhaps no issue illustrated this as clearly as the Terry Schiavo case.

The medical condition of a patient was discussed on the floor of Congress, in the halls of justice and the in court of public opinion, yet organized medicine did nothing to bring medical, scientific sanity to a country craving answers on this issue.

It is time for this voice.

A physician voice that is not so compromised by conflicts of interest that it cannot advocate for the lowest cost medications for seniors.

A voice who will call for the radical overhaul of the malpractice system that fairly compensates all patients injured by poor care, promotes the safest medical practices and stops the waste of frivolous lawsuits.

A voice who advocates for a system of care that first and foremost, ensures that every person in this country can receive affordable, quality healthcare that allows them to reach their full potential.

This after all is supposed to be the promise of a democratic society.

This, then is the mission of the NPA:

“The National Physicians Alliance is founded to restore physicians’ primary emphasis on the core values of our profession: service, integrity, and advocacy. The NPA offers a professional home for physicians seeking creative collaboration and mutual support. As a
diverse physician community, we work to improve health and well being, and to ensure equitable, affordable, high quality health care for all people.”

I encourage you all to join us. Explore this blog, our website, join a committee, make a donation. Help us build a strong community of physicians whose primary mission is to first and foremost to safeguard and improve the health or our people.

Thank you,

Lydia

President and Founder, NPA