Rhode Island Governor's Newsletter June 2021

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Kelly A McGarry, MD, FACP, ACP Governor

Kelly A McGarry, MD, FACP, ACP Governor

Dear Chapter Members:

Welcome to summer and to Pride Month!! The impetus of the modern LGBT rights movement began early on the morning of Saturday, June 28, 1969 when lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons rioted following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, New York City. This riot and further protests and rioting over the following nights were the watershed moment in the modern LGBT rights movement. These events sparked organizing LGBT pride marches on a much larger public scale across our country. LGBT Pride Month occurs in the United States to commemorate the Stonewall riots and to recognize the positive impact LGBT people have had in the world.

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2021 Annual Meeting

Our annual meeting was wildly successful in spite of being held virtually. Thanks to the hard work of our co-Chairs, Drs. Drew Nagle and Stephanie Catanese, things came off without a hitch! We raised $400 for ClothesToKidsRI. Thanks to all who donated. Thanks to our fabulous speakers. We received excellent evaluations of the meeting. Thanks to Roni Phipps, Executive Director, for providing the detailed work required and for her moral support of our leads. Interestingly, we had an overall larger audience of 197 physicians, residents and medical students, which we suspect was due to the virtual content.

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2022 Annual Meeting

We are working on next year's date and content already. We welcome Dr. Alisa Merolli, Designated Institutional Officer/Director Medical Education Kent Hospital, Associate Program Director Kent Hospital/Brown University Internal Medicine Program, Regional Assistant Dean UNECOM from Kent Hospital, to serve as one of the co-chairs next year along with Drs. Nagle and Catanese. We are holding a meeting on July 27th at 7:30 am (location forthcoming) for those interested in participating in our Annual Meeting Planning Committee where you can have input into the format and content of next year's meeting.

HPPC Updates

Our co-chairs, Drs. Kenneth K. Chen, Julio Defillo-Draiby, and Jonathan Leviss, along with one of the recent Brown Medical Student graduate, Katie Hsia, and several members and fellows, led and participated in an inspiring Leadership Day. There are so many important pieces of legislation being supported by ACP that impact our daily lives as physicians and the lives of our patients. This was my first time participating - special shout out to Jonathan Leviss who guided the rest of us in feeling comfortable and confident to speak about the issues with our representatives. It was easy, fun, and rewarding. I hope we get much more participation next year. I urge all of you to think about it - could not have been easier and you don't have to be an expert on law, you simply have to care about patients and our lives as physicians.

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If anyone has any additional ideas they wish to share with them, you can contact them directly: Ken Chen , Julio Defillo or Jonathan Leviss .

ACP Action Alert: Urge Congress to Support Medicaid/Medicare Payment Parity for Primary Care

Something simple you can do RIGHT NOW to help achieve advance Medicaid/Medicare Payment Parity is to click on this link and call our Senators and Congressman. This is incredibly important to primary care and to our patients. It took me five minutes total. Take the time and show our representatives how important this is to us and our patients.

That's it for now. Stay safe, have a great summer, and try to get in some relaxation time for yourselves.

Best,

Kelly