March 31, 2008
 

 
TOA President's Update
  

By John T. Gill, MD
President, Texas Orthopaedic Association

In Texas and around the country, many health care issues important to orthopaedics are either new on the scene or seem to be ongoing problems. This is our second call for you to take the TOA Issues Survey.

President Elect, Dr. Tim Beck is working on TOA committee organization

and is getting the advocacy system ready for the Texas Legislative Session. He needs your input to make sure TOA is addressing your issues. As Chair of the AAOS Board of Councilors, I also need to know the opinions of my Texas colleagues and I promise to take your concerns to your national organization.

To help us better measure the temperature of the Texas orthopaedic community, please take our online survey by clicking here. - The password is: toa-03-25-08-is ... or please open, print and fax this form to answer these questions for us so we will know your concerns.
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2008 AAOS National Orthopaedic Leadership Conference (NOLC)
     

National Orthopaedic Leadership Conference (NOLC), April 30 - May 3, 2008 - JW Marriott, Washington DC.

Join TOA leaders at the NOLC meeting in Washington. This important

meeting will include national issue briefing and Capitol Hill Visits. The NOLC now includes the State Societies Strategy Meeting on Wednesday which is perfect officer training for TOA new leaders. TOA delegates planning on attending the NOLC should schedule their arrival on Wednesday to participate in the Combined Meeting.

TOA usually has a delegation of fifteen orthopaedic surgeons attending this meeting. Ten of these delegates have official AAOS business to conduct and are reimbursed for travel expenses by the Academy. That leaves five slots for TOA members interested in socioeconomic and political issues on the national level. Please contact donna@toa.org if you are wish to attend this important meeting to visit your elected representatives at the nation's Capitol.

The registration deadline for NOLC is April 7th so please contact TOA within the next week if you are interested in going to Washington, DC. We are booking appointments with members of Congress and with Texas Senators.
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This Week In Texas: Mignon McGarry Memos

By Mignon McGarry
TOA Legislative Advocate / Memo: Wed. November 28th, 2007
TOA Online Version: All Memos

 

March 26th, Wednesday

Just a reminder that early voting begins in areas with run-off elections on Monday, March 31st and runs through Friday, April 4th. The run-off

elections are on Tuesday, April 8th. There are five Republican primary races that will be decided in the run-off election. In Williamson County, Bryan Daniel and Dee Hobbs are competing to be the Republican nominee in the race to replace retiring Rep. Mike Krusee in District 52. Over in District 55 in Bell County, currently represented by retiring Rep. Dianne Delisi, Martha Tyroch and Ralph Sheffield are the Republican candidates. Rep. Buddy West (R-Odessa) is facing Tryon Lewis in the Republican primary run-off race for District 81 in Ector County. In Dallas County, Angie Chen Button and Randy Dunning will compete to be the Republican nominee for District 112, currently held by retiring Rep. Fred Hill. Finally, Ken Legler and Fred Roberts will face off in the Republican primary run-off for District 144 in Harris County, the seat currently held by Rep. Robert Talton.

It looks like The University of Texas System will be getting a new chancellor. It is not official yet but it looks like the current UT System Chancellor Mark Yudof will move to California to take over the reins as president of the University of California.

Under the pink dome in Austin, Senate and House committee hearings on Interim Charges are in full swing. Expect those to continue through the summer and early fall. To listen to committee hearings in real time or after the fact, click here and then  click on either the Texas House or the Texas Senate websites. Both sites have connections to video and audio of committee meetings held in Austin.
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Match Day Sees High Success Rate, Increase In Orthopaedic Residencies
    

The National Resident Matching Program reports that 94.2 percent of medical school seniors who applied for residencies this year were paired with a program of their choice—the highest percentage in more than three decades—and that 84.6 percent of those seniors matched to one

of their top three program choices.  Overall, there were 28,737 applicants vying for one of 22,240 first-year residency positions—the most applicants in history. Of those applicants, a record-high 15,242 were U.S. medical school seniors. There were 636 orthopaedic residency positions offered, up from 616 in 2007. 

To view the press release - please click here.  To view the complete statistics - please click here.
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Personal Injury Lawyers Up The Ante
  

Last month, Protect Patients Now reported on the case being brought in a Texas court challenging the constitutionality – vis-à-vis the Texas constitution – of that state’s law limiting non-economic damages in medical liability lawsuits. Personal injury attorneys have now upped the ante considerably, filing a class action suit in federal court in Marshall, Texas, saying that the law’s limits violate the U.S. constitution on four grounds: right to trial, due process, equal protection and right to

petition. This is the first federal challenge to the Texas law, which was approved in 2003 when Texas voters passed Prop. 12 to amend the state constitution.

Jon Opelt, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Patient Access, which was at the forefront of movement to pass medical liability reform, called it “a Hail Mary” pass. But as he points out, those passes are sometimes caught. An adverse ruling in federal court would imperil every state reform with non-economic damage limits that is now in place throughout the nation.

Protect Patients Now will keep you informed about any and all developments in this case important to patients and physicians across the country. In the meantime, you can read more about this issue case by clicking here and here.
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