Governor's Newsletter, December 1999
Werner F. Barth, MD, FACP
Governor, District of Columbia Chapter
Regional Meeting: January 14-15, 2000
Uniformed Services University Health Sciences
Our regional meeting will again be at USUHS this year and will feature the following topics:
- Hypertension in Elderly - Elijah Saunders, MD, University of Maryland
- Hormonal Replacement Therapy - Craig Winkel, MD, Georgetown
- New Modalities for detection of Coronary Disease - Robert Balaban, PhD, NIH
- Lyme Disease: Controversies - Arthur Weinstein, MD, George Washington Univ
- Heparin Use and Antiplatelet Drugs - Craig Kessler, MD, Georgetown
- Appropriate Use of Antibiotics - Gerald Mandell, MD, University of Virginia
- Hemochromatosis, New developments - Rowen Zetterman, MD, Nebraska
- Vasculitis - Carol Langford, MD, NIH
- Alzheimers: New Treatments - Trey Sunderland, MD, NIH
There will be two concurrent workshop sessions:
(a) Hands on demonstration of joint aspiration for the primary care physician - Marcia Coe, WHC (knee aspiration, soft tissue injections); and
(b) Computer Workshop for Beginners and Intermediates - Thomas Kuhn
There will be Associate Podium Presentations on Friday and Poster Presentations on Saturday.
We are fortunate to have Rowen Zetterman, MD, FACP, Chair-elect of the Board of Regents, to bring us information from the College as well as Daniel Duffy to discuss Recertification. The Town Meeting, which will be held on Saturday morning, will provide opportunity for lively discussion and questions.
Regional Meeting Awards Dinner January 14, 2000
I hope you can all attend the Awards Dinner scheduled for Friday night at 7 p.m., at the Bethesda Country Club on Bradley Boulevard in Bethesda. Come join us in honoring our local recipients. It is one of the highlights of the year.
Laureate Awardees
Gary Simon, MD, FACP
Thomas Connally, MD, FACP
Community Based Teachers
Prudence Kline, MD, FACP
Randi Abramson, MD
Voluntary Physician Award
Elmer Huerta, MD
We will also honor those physicians in our Chapter who have received a Masters or other national awards to be presented at the national meeting in Philadelphia next April. We have been well represented in the past and will again this year.
Election of Officers
Following the merger of the ACP with the ASIM, we rewrote our Chapter bylaws, which now allow for the election of officers and council members at-large at our regional meeting. The Nominations Committee, chaired by James Curtin, puts the following slate up for election at our regional meeting:
Vice President - Jerry Meyer
Secretary/Treasurer - Andrew Umhau
Council Members at-large -
Lawrence Klein - 1 year term
Shelly R McDonald-Pinkett - 1 year term
Jehan El-Bayoumi - 2 year term
Victor F. Scott - 2 year term
The election will take place Saturday morning following the Town Meeting.
We plan to make this a regular feature of our regional meeting. I have asked each of the Candidates to include a brief description of themselves and their prior activities with the ACP or ASIM.
Jerry Meyer, MD, FACP
At the time of merger of the ACP and the ASIM, Dr. Meyer, a graduate of the University of Chicago Medical School and Residency and Emory Cardiology fellowship, was President-Elect of DC ASIM, was a delegate to the ASIM house of delegates and served on the AD HOC DC Chapter of the ACP Bylaws Committee to complete the local merger. He has been a Fellow in the American College of Physicians for 20 years.
Dr. Meyer joined the full time faculty of George Washington University in 1972 until 1978 when he moved to a teaching position and private practice at Providence Hospital and continued as Clinical Professor of Medicine at George Washington University.
He has been active with the DC Medical Society on the Legislative and Medical Economics Committees and AD HOC Committee on Health Care Reform and with the American Heart Association as Chairman of the Education Committee, board member and Vice President. He is a Fellow in the American College of Cardiology and board certified in both Cardiology and Internal Medicine.
Of his role as Vice President, Dr. Meyer says: "In this time of new merger of ACP and ASIM and malaise in medical practice particularly in Internal Medicine, it is important that we at the local level influence the Board of Regents to be more supportive of its constituency. Until now, the Board has been so afraid of appearing self serving that its policies have frequently been detrimental to the practicing internist. We no longer have a House of Delegates so it will be up to our local leadership to provide grass roots input. With my experience with ASIM I see an important role for me in this area."
Andrew Umhau, MD, FACP
Andrew Umhau, MD, FACP, has been practicing internal medicine in Washington for over 10 years. He did his undergraduate work at Davidson College and medical school at Duke University. He was a medical resident and chief resident at Georgetown before going into practice with Foxhall Internists where he is currently a partner.
He has been active on the local Governor's Council for about eight years mostly in planning and arrangements for the chapter meeting. He was recently a member of the local Bylaws Committee involved with the ACP-ASIM merger. He has served two three year terms as a reviewer for the National Associate abstract competitions. He served a term on the ASIM Board.
Lawrence Klein, MD, FACP
I appreciate being nominated for one of the elected positions on the District of Columbia's ACP-ASIM Governor's Advisory Council. I am a general internist who has been practicing in the setting of a group practice here in DC for the past fifteen years. Prior to this, I spent four years on the full time faculty of John Hopkins Medical School after completing a Henry J. Kaiser Foundation Fellowship in General Internal Medicine.
During my time here in Washington, I have spent ten years on the Executive Board of the DC Society of Internal Medicine, including two years each as Vice President and President of the chapter. I have also served as chairman of DCSIM's Third Party's Payor Committee concentrating on issues on Medicare Reimbursement. I was a member of ASIM's National Laboratory Committee for four years, two years of which I served as Chairman of this Committee. I have also attended six of ASIM's national meetings as a delegate representing the doctors of the District of Columbia metropolitan area.
In addition to the above, I have served as a delegate to the local Medical Society's House of Delegates on five occasions and on the Sibley Memorial Hospital Senior Institute Subcommittee for the four years of its existence.
My special goal if I am elected to serve on next year's local Governor's Advisory Council would be to work on facilitating local doctors' interaction with Medicare, as well as in general to work on issues which will improve the practice environment for doctors in the local area.
Victor F. Scott, MD
Dr. Victor Scott was born in Bermuda, educated in Canada and the U.S. and is a graduate of the Howard University College of Medicine. He has been a member of the faculty of the College of Medicine since 1971. He holds the rank of Associate Professor of Medicine, he is the Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology in the Department of Medicine, and he serves as the Vice-Chairman of the Department of Medicine. Dr. Scott has led many initiatives for the College of Medicine and Howard University Hospital, including but not limited to the Operations Action Group and the Agenda for Change. He presently serves as President and CEO of Howard University Physicians, the practice organization of the clinical faculty.
Dr. Scott is a member of a number of national physician organizations including the American Gastroenterological Association, and the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease. He is also a member of the Association of Academic Minority Physicians, and serves as a Councilor of that organization. In the College of Medicine, he is serving his third term as a member of the Executive Committee, and also serves on the Curriculum Committee. Dr. Scott is a member of the Board of Directors of the Howard University Medical Alumnae Association, and NCRIC PO, the Physician Provider Organization wing of the National Capital Reciprocal Insurance Company.
Dr. Scott received the "Pearl Watson Award for Medicine" awarded by the Caribbean American Intercultural Organization in August 1998, and was recognized as the "Top Doctor" in the field of Gastroenterology by the Washingtonian Magazine in April 1999.
Jehan (Gigi) El-Bayoumi, MD, FACP
I was born in Tallahassee, Florida and raised in Michigan where I attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for both undergraduate and medical school. I then moved to Washington, DC to complete my internship, residency and chief residency in Internal Medicine at the George Washington University Medical Center over 14 years ago. I have been on faculty since that time and have served as clerkship director for many years prior to being appointed to my current position over a year ago. I am an associate professor and the program director for the Internal Medicine Residency.
Learning how to better educate and evaluate students and residents has been a long-standing interest of mine. For the past nine years, a group of us from the division of general internal medicine has been involved with the National Board of Medical Examiner's ongoing computer based testing project that will now be included in step 3 of USMLE. Women and minority health, smoking cessation are all areas that I have lectured on in the schools of public health, medicine and the residency program, as well as the community. Educating the public about health and de-mystifying medicine and technology is a special interest in which I have done extensive media work. I feel that we as physicians need to be more involved in letting people know who we are and what we do. I support the college's initiative to actively teach the public about internal medicine.
Shelly R. McDonald-Pinkett, MD
Dr. McDonald-Pinkett is a graduate of the Medical College of Pennsylvania. She completed her internship and residency at Howard University Hospital and is currently an Assistant Professor and Chief of General Internal Medicine at Howard. Most recently she was appointed Director of Ambulatory Care Services. Dr. McDonald-Pinkett has been a member of the College since 1996.
DC Council Resolution 13-333
The DC Council will very shortly consider resolution 13-333. This would permit our self- employed physicians in the District of Columbia to come together to negotiate certain terms and conditions of their contracts with health plans.
This would include such issues as:
- Practice guidelines;
- Utilization review procedure;
- Network selection and termination criteria;
- Quality assurance programs; and
- Method and timing of physician payment.
Our council overwhelmingly supports this bill and feels that it will:
- Improve patient care;
- Help level the playing field for physicians and patients in a market dominated by a few health plans; and
- Potentially encourage competition among health plans.
The ACP-ASIM did come out this past July with a position paper on physicians and joint negotiations.
- Physicians should have the right to negotiate jointly with health insurance plans over issues that affect the quality of, and access to, patient care, including payment policies that because they are unrealistic or unfair are likely to affect adversely access and quality.
- ACP-ASIM opposes joint actions by any physicians that would 1) deny or limit services to patients (including strikes, slow downs, boycotts, and administrative of other organized actions that would harm patients), or 2) result in price fixing or other anti-competitive behavior.
Congratulations to Our New Fellows
| Jay M. Barnett Edwarda M. Buda David M. Essayan Junette Gibbons Mark F. Gourley Margaret A. Hamburg Peter G.Hamm Peter C. Hill |
Patricia D. Kellogg Prudence P. Kline Ken Kobyashi Valerie D. Riddle Nada Roche Paul A. Silver Frederick K. Williams |
What's New
Contact Information
Michael S. Gold, MD, FACP
Governor, DC Chapter
Chapter Support Staff
Ellen Gold
Phone: 301-770-7227
Fax: 301-984-7998
ellengold4@aol.com