ACOFP Blog
For Family, By Family—ACOFP Blog
ACOFP is a community of current and future family physicians that champions osteopathic principles and supports its members by providing resources such as education, networking and advocacy, while putting patients first.
Third-party payors have disturbed the service provider’s business process of fulfilling the needs and desires of their clients in health care. Insurance companies have taken away decision-making abilities from physicians and patients. Direct primary care brings that function back to physicians trained to make medical decisions in cooperation with their patients.
Introducing our newly-formatted conference: the ACOFP Intensive Osteopathic Update (IOU). This exciting event will feature four tracks with topics such as diversity, telemedicine, pain management and OMT.
We need to have empathy for the diverse situations faced by our patients and work to find ways to break down the barriers to acceptable health care for all—in particular, our underserved and underrepresented populations.
I have made some great connections with attendings, residents and students. ACOFP has many resources, such as Board Review, podcasts and blogs that have been very informative.
A raid at the Stonewall Inn created momentum for the LGBTQI community, leading us to Pride Month, which is celebrated across the country in June of each year. During this month events and parades are held celebrating the LGBTQI community and the progressive changes of subsequent decades.
We obviously cannot solve all of the current social problems and health disparities alone, but it is important to leverage our role with patients and in our communities as best we can to help be one of many needed parts of the solution. As physicians, we have a duty to protect the minds, bodies and souls of all our patients.
To the 2020 graduating class of osteopathic medical students, congratulations! ACOFP leadership is proud of your hard work and accomplishments throughout your four years of medical training. Your perseverance has paid off.
The CARES Act suspended payment obligations from March 13, 2020, through September 30, 2020 (referred to as the “forbearance period”), and most federal student loans will have a zero percent interest rate during this forbearance period.
These past three months have been challenging for people all over the world. As health care providers, we have not had the privilege to stay at home to avoid exposure. As family physicians we have made ourselves available by phone, online and, at times, in person. Our first duty has been to our communities and our patients.
The Paycheck Protection Program is a new Small Business Administration loan program established by Congress through the CARES Act to protect small businesses, including physician practices, and provide an incentive for these businesses to keep their employees and workers on the payroll.
What we are experiencing now is a world-wide disaster drill. Decisions are being made all over the world. The nursing and medical staffs are overwhelmed. In response, immune systems are overwhelmed, and medical personnel are getting sick—physically and mentally.
As osteopathic physicians, we are schooled in the body/mind/spirit of our patients, and therefore, we know the difference between curing and healing. If you cannot cure the patient, hopefully you can heal them. Nowhere is this perhaps more important than in the care of our patient with end-of-life issues.
Over the past two months, many family medicine physicians have seen their practices develop or expand telemedicine capabilities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This shift towards telehealth virtual care delivery has created equally great opportunities and challenges. Rapid modification of traditional outpatient workflow processes to support the provision of care in a virtual environment has been critical during the pandemic to maintain patient health care access and ensure medical practice viability. Although the changes in workday procedures has been profound for physicians and patients, we must consider that the impact of these changes has also been seismic in scale for support staff.
We have a racist among us and it is not a person. It has no particular involvement with any political party. This racist has crept in an insinuated itself into our homes, our schools, our workplaces and where our most vulnerable live, like nursing homes. Health disparities can be caused by economic status, race, close living conditions, limited access to continuous health care, geography, lack of green space and a paucity of healthy food access.
ACOFP is proud of its exceptional members and their commitment to excellence and upholding osteopathic values. We are happy to share this year’s winners, who were chosen by members, committees, state societies, colleges of osteopathic medicine, residency programs and the ACOFP Board of Governors.
People were howling, setting fireworks off and celebrating at 8:00 pm to honor and support health care workers on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. This filled me with a sense of pride and hope that I and fellow health care workers are not in this alone but are supported by our neighbors and community that we serve.
