California Southern I Governor's Newsletter July 2020

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Michael E. Lazarus, MBBCh, FACP, ACP Governor

Michael E. Lazarus, MBBCh, FACP, ACP Governor

 


Governor's Message

I am delighted to write to you as your new Governor of ACP California Region 1! I do want to take this opportunity to thank my predecessor and close friend Dr. Mark Noah for all of his support and wisdom over the years. I am taking the reins of our region at a particularly challenging time for us as physicians and as Americans. I am energized and optimistic that we will all work together to emerge stronger and wiser from this pandemic. I am hopeful that we will also be more enlightened and inclusive as citizens. I am looking forward to serving you all in the coming years and continuing the incredible work of Dr. Noah.

Michael E. Lazarus, MBBCh, FACP
Governor, ACP Southern California Region 1

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A Message from the Southern California Region 1 Past Governor

Dear Colleagues,

I know the past 4 months have been some of the most challenging many of us will ever experience in our lives. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted both our professional and personal lives to a degree we could not have imagined only 6 months ago. We share the grief of those of us who have lost loved ones and valued colleagues to this scourge, and we cheer the heroism of those who have selflessly cared for patients in the ICUS and hospital wards early in this pandemic when we were not aware of how we could best protect ourselves from the virus. The impact on many of our medical practices has been devastating and it is so distressing when I hear that some of our members have not been able to make it through these months and are closing their offices. Then just as we started to reopen many of our offices and start to cautiously move forward, the horrendous death of George Floyd occurred and the racial and socioeconomic inequities in our country is again put before us.

This is not the way I imagined that I would close my term as your ACP Governor. However, I am confident that this storm will be weathered and some of the skills that we will master be it video health visits to an awareness of unconscious biases, will help us in the delivery of improved care for the patients we serve.

The ACP is here for you and I hope you have all visited the national ACP website that has extremely useful COVID-19 advocacy and clinical practice information. We have been pushing our California legislators to provide support for those physicians whose practices have been devastated over the past several months and to help support the training of physicians who are going into the field of primary care in this challenging environment. We are planning our next Southern California ACP regional meeting to be virtual this fall, and we hope this will allow so many more of you to participate without leaving your homes or offices. More information and an exact agenda for this meeting will be sent to you very soon.

I finally want to thank you all for the support you have given to me and our regional ACP this last 4 years. I will always be indebted to those who worked so hard to make our local chapter so successful including the members of the Governor's Council, the multiple physicians who participated in our regional meetings, and to our Executive Director, Gus Chavez, for his diligence and wisdom in keeping our chapter so well supported.

Your new Governor is Michael Lazarus, MBBCh, FACP, who is the Medical Director of the UCLA Hospitalist Section. I have worked with Michael over many years in multiple different capacities and I am confident he will move our ACP chapter forward and find multiple new ways to serve our chapter's members.

Best regards,

Mark Noah, MD, FACP
Immediate Past Governor, ACP Southern California Region 1

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ACP Envisioning a Better US Health Care System

I know many of you have already reviewed this landmark paper from ACP which developed a new vision for the future of health care policy. I am attaching this link for those who have not had a chance to look over this thoughtful look at how we should plan for the future of health care in the United States.

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ACP Student Internist Award

Each year the ACP honors a medical student from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Keck School of Medicine with an award as the top student going into Internal Medicine residency training. This year, we are happy to include a student from Western University of Health Services.

This year's winners include Cher X. Huang, MD from UCLA, and David Briganti, DO from Western University, and Kishan Patel, MD from USC. Congratulations to all three graduates!

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David Briganti, DO
College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific
Western University of Health Sciences
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Cher X. Huang, MD
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
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Krishan Patel, MD
Keck School of Medicine @ USC

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ACP Southern California Region 1 Financial Report

The financial statement through June 10, 2020 shows that the chapter is financially healthy, and will be ending the fiscal year with a financial reserve of about 2.25 times our annual budget. The impact of the COVID pandemic has meant some of our budgeted expenses that support chapter activities at our national meetings (reception, student and resident meeting support) and leadership day in Washington D.C. could not been used this year. This left us with a significant budgetary surplus. Total revenue was $127,720 with the income is mostly related to membership dues and our regional meeting income. Total investment gain was about $6,000 secondary to a change in investment strategy that move some reserved funds to an 80% Bond 20% equity fund from a savings account. Total Expenses were down significantly to $82,200 against a budget of $128,000 as mentioned above because of COVID meeting cancellations. We expect these expenses will return in the future once the traveling can resume post this pandemic. A detailed statement for the full financial year will be available by the end of July 2020 by contacting our Chapter Executive Director, Gus Chavez, at socal1@gmail.com

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New ACP Fellows from the Southern California Region I Chapter

I am happy to announce the following ACP members that have been advanced to Fellowship in the last 6 months through March 2020:

Yalda Azarmehr, MD, FACP
Kevin Bechler, MD, FACP
Eveleen Bhasin, DO, FACP
Annapoorna Chirra, MD, FACP
Mufaddal Q Dahodwala, MD, FACP
Susan Fleischman, MD, FACP
Jonas B Green, MD, FACP
Gary David Guo, MD, FACP
Patricia F Harris, MD, FACP
Arash Heidari, MD, FACP
Ruth M Karunananthan, MBchB, FACP
Angela K Kleiber, MD, FACP
Vernon H. Lackman, MD, FACP
Yu-Hsiang Lin, MD, FACP
Janet Ma, MD, FACP
Chonn Khristin M Ng, MD, FACP
Teryl K Nuckols, MD, FACP
Jon Rasak, MD, FACP
Sonja Rosen, MD, FACP
Saeed Sadeghi, MD, FACP
Nisha Viswanathan, MD, FACP
Donna L Washington, MD, FACP
Alan Weinberger, MD, FACP
Jonathan M Weiner, MD, FACP
Phillip C Zakowski, MD, FACP

 

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ACP Southern California Regional Meeting 2020

The annual Southern California Scientific Meeting will be held virtually on Saturday, October 10, 2020. The planning committee is hard at work designed a wonderful meeting with updates on both hospital medicine and general internal medicine among other valuable topics. We will have our annual medical student and resident poster competition, and residency program Doctor's Dilemma® competition. You will be receiving more information about this meeting in the very near future.

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