President's Message
READY FOR ANYTHING

By Samuel Wilson, M.D.

I am dealing with change this month. The signs are ominous: last week my mother recommended I wear my hair shorter so my bald spot won't be so prominent. At work my hospital administrator moved the chairs in the hallway placed there for simple quickie emergency patients - due to changes in fire code enforcement. HIPAA Rules will force us to move our x-ray viewing box from its present locations, I can't use my abbreviations anymore, and furthermore, there is a pneumonia protocol to learn and hospital billing wants me to clarify my diagnosis.

So how is it going with you? I don't like change.

The power I expected to leverage, the compensation and respectability are different than I calculated. Yet my duties are not diminished but are greater, and I am still the one held responsible.

More than half of what I learned is no longer true or relevant and yet I'm still expected to accomplish my mission.

With so many distractions how am I supposed to stay focused, adjust to the changes and return to my priorities and not get into the negative reactiveness that allows the environment and circumstances to dictate the agenda and my behavior?

I have been recently influenced by a book on personal productivity by David Allen called "Ready for Anything." In it he suggested that our mind is cleared for creativity when we are freed from the burden of carrying all our "to do's" by a system that orients us to where we are relative to ALL our long and short-term goals.

Allen recommends we write down the answers to our mission-critical questions and do the jobs that are nagging us. When disoriented, he suggests we focus on any unfinished job at hand. His system requires that we put in writing what success would mean for us for short-term and long-term goals and to clarify what our job really is.

If we, as a significant part of the healthcare sector, were to apply these lessons to the task of medicine, we would ask the questions:

• What is our job? What do we need to do today?
• What are our long and short-term projects? How are we doing with them, and which is most pressing?
• How is our environment likely to change in the next five years and how do we need to change to be most effective?
• At our best what is our purpose?

We live in a society with competing stakeholders, many of whom act in organized fashion. Can we continue to have only 50 percent participation in the professional structure that acts locally on our behalf?

I believe that our Medical Society will become stronger because of the direction we are moving. In February I shared with you a bit of the history of the development of the Foundations for Medical Care and announced that SBCMS was working with the Riverside County Foundation for Medical Care (RCFMC) to bring the former San Bernardino Foundation for Medical Care (SBFMC) under the management of RCFMC. It is my pleasure now to announce the successful completion of our partnership and the merger of the SBFMC network of providers - a panel of physicians, allied health providers, and hospitals in San Bernardino County formerly affiliated with Pacific Foundation for Medical Care - with the RCFMC network of providers.

The INLAND EMPIRE FOUNDATION FOR MEDICAL CARE (IEFMC) is now the largest independent, not-for-profit network in the Inland Empire. It is a full service provider network with over 1800 local physicians and allied health providers and 32 hospitals. We are one of 19 affiliated local Foundations that comprise the California Foundation for Medical Care, a statewide network of over 37,000 physicians representing every county in California. We have appointed a SBCMS member to serve on the IEFMC Board of Directors.

The purpose of the IEFMC is "To promote the private practice of medicine and to provide quality care at a reasonable cost; to promote freedom of choice by the patient; and to guard the "time honored physician/patient relationship."

Some very important reasons to join us:

• Membership in the IEFMC is a benefit of your SBCMS membership and is available at no cost. Non-member physicians pay $450 per year to belong.
  
• IEFMC directs patients to participating providers through its contracts with employers, insurance carriers, self-funded employer groups and other health care purchasers. It provides a reasonable cost containment vehicle for payors and patients while allowing patients the freedom of choice of providers.
  
• IEFMC contracts with its participating providers at fair rates (120% RBRVS for PPO and 110% RBRVS for EPO.)
  
• IEFMC has three networks, a PPO Network, an EPO Network, and a Workers' Comp Network.

Hospitals are an important part of IEFMC. By giving IEFMC competitive rates, hospitals support their local physicians and enable IEFMC to compete with the large insurance carriers.

By the time you read this, you will have received additional information on participating in the Inland Empire Foundation For Medical Care. If you are currently participating in the Pacific Foundation for Medical Care (PFMC) network, your contract has been assigned to IEFMC. If you did not participate under PFMC, but would like to participate in IEFMC you may contact Mary Barnes at IEFMC, (909) 686-3342 ext. 309 for an application packet.

I conclude this column with Allen's "words of wisdom" to consider as we move into this new season of change:

• Stability on one level opens creativity on another
  
• You can't win a game you haven't defined
  
• The value of a future goal is the present change it fosters

As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions, and I would like to hear from you either in person or by email at admin@sbcms.org.

Dr. Wilson's Recent Reading List:

The Bandit Queen of India: An Indian Woman's Amazing Journey From Peasant to International Legend by Phoolan Devi, Marie-Therese Cuny, and Paul Rambali. The rise of a female Robin Hood to prominence in the Indian Parliament.

Morality for Beautiful Girls, by Alexander McCall Smith

Tears of the Giraffe, also by Alexander McCall Smith

Use What You've Got: and Other Business Lessons My Mother Told Me, by Barbara Corcoran. Secrets of a successful New York real estate broker.