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President’s Letter
Welcome to 2022. We all optimistically anticipated that 2021 would put us well past the majority of pandemic-related challenges and bring a return to daily life as we once shared it. Everyone, I believe, can agree we’re not as close to that previous “normal” as we’d prefer to be. 2021 did improve on 2020 and, optimistically, this year will afford us the opportunity to solidly build on our experiences making the best data-driven, science-backed choices possible going forward. For any circumstances we encounter with limited data and knowledge, I hope we take the best information attainable and add logical, reasonable forethought before moving our community forward. Taking emotion out of the process is crucial to limiting public confusion and hysteria for the betterment of our families, our patients and practices, our community, and our state. Combatting the pandemic continues to be a huge task, but it’s one we’re capable of surmounting in conjunction with state and local government officials and other medical allied groups. Let’s take stock of a few other areas before getting too deep into 2022: We should be especially proud about Project Access West Tennessee. Launched in 2021, growing enrollee patient and volunteer physician numbers continue to expand specialty care access for the uninsured population in our community as we partner with the Tennessee Department of Health. I trust West Tennessee will reap the benefits of this program on the same, if not greater, scale as our sister Metro societies with similar programs across the state. An updated strategic plan designed by the MMS board of directors afforded us the opportunity: • to expand our membership to over 1,000 dues-paying members. This unprecedented growth garners MMS the unique opportunity to place another representative member on the TMA Board of Trustees. We now have another voice supporting West Tennessee interests in the fuller scope of Tennessee’s interests at this leadership table. I believe that MMS will be successful in expanding further to at least 1,100 members in the near future. Expansion is dependent on MMS providing greater value-added benefits to our membership along with the continued dedicated work of the great staff at MMS. •
to address the practical issue of increased Memphis Medical Foundation financial security. In this regard, the foundation will need to be redefined and re-entrenched with leadership to ensure that it is properly guided and funded for its future stability and vitality. I encourage our membership to augment foundation support through charitable and estate gifts as additional plans are developed.
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to further foster and nurture the inclusion of resident physicians and young physicians in more MMS and TMA programming going forward. Note that recently TMA reinforced the importance of young physicians by including them as voting members in future elections and at the house of delegates. It is imperative that we maintain awareness of the needs of this diverse and changing population. The challenges new physicians
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