President's Letter - Voice Spring 2024
The Voice Spring Edition
Dear NCMS Members,
Here’s to hoping everyone has had a wonderful beginning to 2024, full of family, friends, and some winter fun.
The Society has been active these first few months, primarily in the areas of advocacy, public health, and wellness, with our annual meeting occurring in February at the Winding Events Center in Severance, on the theme of artificial intelligence implementation in healthcare. Our keynote speaker was the CEO of a company implementing AI tools in the largest healthcare system in New York City, we heard from an FBI special agent on continuing our partnership towards providing enhanced mental health services for those at risk of violent crime, promoted our Doc2Doc Wellbeing program, and honored our scholarship winners and physician of the year, Dr. David Smith — and the night was capped off with a spectacular drone show!
On the advocacy front, throughout this year’s session and as we enter an election year, we have seen both successes as well as continued challenges. Of those successes, NCMS was responsible for initiating the first law in the nation for the protection of privately collected biological and neural data, a real win for patients and trust in the era of medical grade consumer neurotechnology. House Bill 24-1058 passed both chambers with near unanimity, and on April 17th became the first law of its kind in the nation, signed by the Governor — and appeared on the front page of the New York Times the next day! Click here to read the article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/science/colorado-brain-data-privacy.html
Thank you all for your continued support of such efforts, which promise to improve the lives of patients and change the practice of medicine for the better! Resounding proof that the unified physicians’ voice still matters.
Our Council on Legislation and our Political Action Committee continue to support common sense bills and candidates. Of note, we are advancing a bill on prior authorization (HB24-1149), which will prevent disruptions in and ensure continuities of care, create better transparency, and incentivize physicians that are consistently providing quality care. We invite you to visit the Colorado Medical Society bill tracker for a complete run-down of the bills we’re advocating for on behalf of physicians:
https://cms.org/advocacy/bill-tracker
Despite our victories we are also facing unprecedented challenges to the practice of medicine in the state of Colorado, with opposition groups pushing multiple ballot initiatives, which if passed, would destabilize both the liability climate, as well as what we take for granted for our privacy in confidential peer review. These measures would drive up the cost of healthcare for everyone in the state, as well as malpractice insurance. There currently remains compromise legislation in Senate Bill 130 on the table in the form of modernizing liability caps; however, if a compromise is not reached, we very well could be and should be prepared to head towards a fight at the ballot this fall.
As always, we need your support when it comes to these efforts, and therefore encourage members to give what they can. Below are two links which connect to the Coloradoans Protecting Patient Access Coalition (CPPA), leading our fight at the ballot, as well as the Colorado Medical Political Action Committee (COMPAC), which supports physician and patient-friendly candidates.
- CPPA/CMS donation website: https://givebutter.com/QPZnJ3
- COMPAC: https://members.cms.org/contribute
More information on CPPA can be found here: https://protectpatientaccessco.org/
As the year moves on and develops, NCMS will reach out with more information on how members can get involved in these advocacy efforts, including messaging in the region at the appropriate time. We also encourage anyone interested to join our advocacy committee, which is meeting regularly this year. If you’d like to join, please contact crystal@nocomedsoc.org With a unified voice and all hands-on deck we believe we will be able to maintain Colorado’s stable climate for the practice of medicine.
And so thus far while this has been a year of victories and challenges, through it all we thank you for your continued steadfast support of the health of our patients and region. NCMS remains committed towards improving the the practice of medicine, and to maintaining the healthy community spirit of physicians in Northern Colorado. We appreciate your support in these efforts and hope you’re finding some time to enjoy the arrival of spring!
All the best,
Sean Pauzauskie, MD
President, Northern Colorado Medical Society