If you are a medical professional in the industry today, then you’re here at a time when change is more familiar than constancy. With residents having new health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, ongoing local hospital and clinic mergers, as well as continued preparations for the ICD-10 medical coding / billing conversion (which has now been delayed until at least October 2015), there is never a dull moment in our daily routine.
In the midst of all of the government regulations, politics, new policies and procedures, and new faces, we are all trying to stay focused on the reason why we came to be physicians: To keep the “care” in the word healthcare. It would be easy to fall into the trap of the bureaucracy (or red-tape) of the business, and forget what put us on this path to caring for patients. Dr. Maria Martino, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Lakeland OB/GYN and a Polk County Medical Association member, shares her story of the discovery for her passion. Her Medical Memoirs serve as a pleasant reminder for why we ultimately found our calling in the medical field. I encourage you to read her story, as well as the updates in this edition of Central Florida Doctor on all of the happenings in the local industry.
Last, but certainly not least, I recommend attending the upcoming event on May 21. The Polk County Medical Association will be hosting an HCV Screening and Linkage seminar. The event will be held at Grillsmith, 1569 Town Center Drive in Lakeland, and begins at 6:30 p.m. To get more information, call the PCMA office at (863) 644-4051. To register online, go to www.simplyspeakinghepatitis.com, click on event registration, enter event code 23410189, and click on “Begin Registration.” You will not want to miss this lecture on new evaluation and diagnosis for Hepatitis C.
Sincerely,
Arvind B. Soni, M.D.
Director of Radiation Oncology
St. Joseph’s Hospital, BayCare Health System
President, Polk County Medical Association