The Value of Membership - Benefits for Members Only
Mohan Mallam, M.D., President
San Bernardino County Medical Society
This is the third in a four-part series.
It has been my experience that professional membership organizations have proved to be important in promoting the interests of those in the profession, and with the complexities of medicine it perhaps is one of the most important of values. Issues affect literally the lives of people. Other professional organizations such as dentists and lawyers have a greater percentage of members simply due to the fact that membership in the organization is required for licensure. Physicians have the opportunity to join organized medicine or to opt out.
Membership in organized medicine, including the San Bernardino County Medical Society and the California Medical Association, offers certain benefits to its members that are not available to physicians who do not choose to join. Some will save your practice money: practice liability insurance, health insurance, billing services, financial and practice planning, office equipment and supplies, and more. Others will improve your practice: training workshops for staff and office managers, discounts on coding seminars and other training. From personal experience, I know they are great values.
Nonmember physicians do not have access to these discounts, but we know they also reap some rewards from your involvement. When we join SBCMS, we join a network of nearly 1,700 San Bernardino County physicians and over 35,000 California physicians who are working together to achieve a unified front and fight against unfair payment practices, restrictions on physician autonomy and more. Membership affords us one strong voice, standing firm against opposition, on issues promoting public health, access to care, and the advancement of medicine – each and every year. Our advocacy promotes MICRA and provides important opportunities to meet with, influence and support our legislators who support medicine. Let me tell you that many important victories have been won this way.
With support from our leadership training, you can choose to be an active leader who analyzes and develops policy, or you can simply elect to stay informed on current issues and enjoy the many resources and benefits that come with membership. Either way, your membership demonstrates a true commitment to improving medicine and healthcare for all. You are not just standing by and letting the other guy do it.
CMA’s Center for Economic Services (CES) is just one recent example of our successful advocacy. CES was founded in 1999 to provide members with one-on-one assistance for billing, contracting and payment problems that may arise. For the second year in a row, the CES has recouped more than $2.7 million from payers on behalf of its members. The center’s reimbursement help line has fielded almost 2,400 calls about billing and contracting issues from more than 1,200 different physician practices. The goal of CES is to empower practices by providing them self-help tools and teaching them how to be effective advocates for physicians and patients. When this fails, CES is ready to intervene with the payer or regulator on the member’s behalf. This support is reserved exclusively for SBCMS/CMA members.
I am pleased to have this opportunity to announce a new value of membership. DocBookMD is a new tool to help solve communication delays. DocBookMD is a physician-only iPhone app that allows physicians to send HIPAA-compliant text messages and photos; assign an urgency setting to outgoing text messages; search a local pharmacy directory; and search the San Bernardino County Medical Society directory. DocBookMD allows you to look up another doctor at the point of care. You can then either call the physician or send a text message with room numbers, medical record numbers, even pictures of wounds and x-rays. And all of this is sent securely and in a way that meets HIPAA requirements. The DocBookMD app is now available to every San Bernardino County Medical Society member free of charge due to the generous sponsorship of NORCAL Mutual Insurance. Only physicians who are members of the society can access DocBookMD, and the app is available for Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and an Android version.
When you join SBCMS/CMA, you hire a powerful professional staff to protect the way you practice medicine from legal, regulatory, and legislative intrusions. Your membership lets you focus on what's really important: your patients. If you take full advantage of the services and benefits available to you, you would more than compensate for your dues investment. This is a true value of membership.
