September 25, 2006

• TOA President's Update
• The Workers Compensation Update
• Texas - District by District:  State Rep. Patrick Rose
• TOA Now Publishes E-Connect Topics and Headlines via RSS
• Bone and Joint Decade National Action Week, Oct. 12-20

You will notice new features on our website that will allow you to communicate directly with us. If you click on the link at the top of the home page that says “Contact the TOA President, Officers or Staff”, you can send us your comments and concerns. We need to hear from you to optimally serve and represent you and the needs of your patients. We have included a link to the President, the Board of Directors, the Executive Director, and our Headquarters staff and IT department. Please use this opportunity to communicate directly with us.

This week, the Texas Medical Association and the PatientsFIRST coalition will be meeting in Austin, with TOA members serving prominently in the leadership of each. Many of our TOA members are leaders in the TMA and will be volunteering their time and talent at the TMA Fall Meeting this weekend. The TMA Board of Trustees is lead by TOA member Dr. Bruce Malone of Austin, who also serves as the Vice-Chairman of the Texas Delegation to the AMA. TMA’s Vice-Speaker is Ft. Worth Orthopaedist Dr. Steven Brotherton. Both the Texas Delegation to the AMA and the TEXPAC (TMA PAC) Board include at least six TOA members each. Dr. John Gill of Dallas serves on the important Council on Legislation, and I have the pleasure of serving as the Chairman of the Committee on Professional Liability and Chairman of PatientsFIRST.

These are important organizations and activities for Texas Orthopaedists and their patients. Just as TOA enjoys an excellent collaborative relationship with the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, it is important to have the voice of orthopaedics in the entities that represent our collective interests in Austin and Washington. I urge you to be involved in your county, state and national medical societies. If you are willing to serve, TOA regularly receives requests for nominations to TMA committees and councils. If you are already involved, thank you. If not, volunteer today. 
We can’t do it for you, without you.

David Teuscher, MD
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The Workers Compensation Update is published quarterly and contains news and information of interest to workers' compensation system participants. Items of interest in the latest issue include:

• Providing for Better Health Care Delivery in the System Under House Bill 7
• Message from Commissioner Albert Betts
• Guidance Offered for Dispute Settlement
• Commissioners' Ombudsman Appointed
• Plain Talk About MQRP by Acting Medical Advisor Dr. Ken Ford
• Best Return-to-Work Practices for Employers
• Pilot Project to Assist Small Employers
• Updated Division Contact Information
• Division Briefs Including: More Networks Certified to Treat Injured Employees, DWC Conference in December and Upgrades to Customer Service and Complaint Resolution

The newest issue of the Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers' Compensation newsletter is now available on the TDI website and can be found by clicking here.
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Instead of visiting our Web site every time you want the latest TOA news, you can use an RSS feed reader to have updated news delivered to your desktop automatically.   TOA publishes the following RSS news feed for RSS feed readers:

http://www.toa.org/rss/feed.xml

What Is RSS?
RSS stands for "Rich Site Summary," "RDF Site Summary," or "Really Simple Syndication," according to different sources. Whatever the initials stand for, RSS is a format based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and is increasingly popular for gathering and distributing Web content such as news headlines. An RSS feed is simply a file that conforms to RSS format. Many sites now publish RSS news feeds, including:  Associations, Books, Blogs, Business, Election 2006, Entertainment/Arts, Food/Drink, Government, Health, Home, Jobs/Careers, Law, News, Podcasts, Reference/Education, Science, Spirituality/Personal Growth, Sports, Streaming Video, Style/Fashion, Technology, Travel and Weather.

How to Read an RSS News Feed
If you want to receive news from RSS feeds, you need a news aggregator -- also called a "feed reader" or "RSS aggregator." A news aggregator can be a program or an extension to your Web browser or email program, and there are many of them available. A news aggregator makes it much easier for you to follow the news that interests you. It automatically displays the updates published by your selected news sources so that you don't have to check each source's Web site separately.

RSS Version
We currently publish the TOA feed as RSS 2.0, the latest version promoted by UserLand.

Indeed, the Syndic8 web site reports that the most popular format of RSS by far is RSS 2.0 with 75.281% using the 2.0 standard. Although we use RSS 2.0, our file is entirely compatible with RSS 0.91. In short, we're in safe company.
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The United States Bone and Joint Decade (USBJD) web site offers physicians and health care organizations numerous resources to help them increase awareness of National Action Week (NAW), Oct. 12-20. The site includes a media tool kit, suggested NAW activities, Bone and Joint Decade background information and data, media strategy and sample press materials. [more]
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