President’s Message

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE to Members

By Dr. Dimitrios 'Takie' Hondros 2021–2022 NCAFP President

2021 INAUGURAL ADDRESS

Learning, Growing and Adapting as a Family Physician

Thank you to all. As I look out in the crowd, I am humbled to be standing here. There are so many people to thank. First to my family. To my wife and kids. I am so blessed to have an awesome, caring, and loving wife. Her support of my love for the NCAFP over the last 20 plus years has been fully appreciated.

My three children have kept me grounded and have helped me become a more compassionate and comprehensive family physician. To my parents, sisters, and their husbands, they have taught me the importance of hard work, dedication, and love for family. To my wife, kids, parents, and siblings, I love you with all my heart and appreciate you being here tonight.

To my amazing medical office partners, colleagues, and staff: how blessed are we to work together? I am surrounded by the most hardworking, talented team in medicine. Their support of me and care of our patients goes above and beyond what most clinics will do. They truly are “our secret sauce.”

To my new independent physician colleagues under Avance’s umbrella in Charlotte, Drs. Rhett Brown, Carson Rounds, Gen. Brauning, and Faison Knox, I am excited to call you my new ‘re-found’ friends on this new great journey for us. To Greg Griggs, a mentor, friend, and so thankful that we here at

TAKING THE OATH... Dr. Hondros is a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University School of Medicine and completed his residency at Carolinas Medical Center where he also served as chief resident. He currently practices Family Medicine in Matthews, NC. Dr. Hondros is married and has three children. He has been involved with the Academy since the start of medical school. As FMIG president and while at WFUSOM, Dr. Hondros served on many state committees, even as a student representative. He later served on the NCAFP Foundation Board as a resident and later a physician member. He has been active within the Academy through medical student activities as well as being a master preceptor, a community preceptor, and a scholarship applicant review committee member.

Executive Officers President President-Elect Dimitrios “Takie” P. Hondros, MD Shauna Guthrie, MD, MPH

Secretary/Treasurer

Garett R. Franklin, MD Immediate Past President Jessica L. Triche, MD Executive Vice President Gregory K. Griggs, MPA, CAE

At-Large Directors

Joshua Carpenter, MD

Jewell P. Carr, MD

Deanna Didiano, DO

Nicole Johnson, MD, MPH

Mark McNeill, MD

Benjamin F. Simmons, MD

Ying Vang, MD

Courtland Winborne, MD

Academic Position Margaret Helton, MD (UNC)

Resident Director Ryan Paulus, DO (UNC)

Resident Director-Elect Matthew Drake, MD (ECU)

Student Director Morgan Carnes (Wake Forest)

Student Director-Elect Morgan Beamon (ECU)

AAFP Delegates & Alternates

AAFP Delegate AAFP Delegate AAFP Alternate AAFP Alternate Richard W. Lord, Jr., MD, MA Robert L. Rich, Jr., MD Tamieka Howell, MD Thomas R. White, MD

2501 Blue Ridge Road, Suite 120, Raleigh, North Carolina 27607

the NCAFP can call him our EVP. And finally, to Fr. Vasileos: your spiritual guidance has kept me focused on why we are here – to help our fellow patients and ourselves improve spiritually, physically, and mentally.

My love for Family Medicine started at the age of 11. My parents at the time moved us to a place with a family medical clinic right out of our neighborhood. Actually, it backed up to my grandparents’ house. Dr Marshall McMillan became our family physician.

I remember during my middle and high school years, I would climb my grandparents’ fence and began to shadow him whenever I had free time. His love and care of all ages was inspiring. Family is important in my culture, so seeing a family physician who valued that just clicked. As I went off to college to major in the sciences, I knew that medical school and Family Medicine was where I wanted to end up. Every chance I got, I would come back to their office to shadow and learn. For that Dr McMillan, thank you.

As I matriculated into medical school at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, I remember the Dean on Day One meeting all of us individually and asking what aspiring medical career choices we were pondering. "Well of course Family Medicine,” I replied. His response, “you will change your mind.” In fact, I didn’t. I quickly met the family physicians there and stuck to them like glue from my first year of medical school. One in particular, Dr. Rich Lord, had just joined the Family Medicine faculty there where his love of teaching and Family Medicine was quickly self-evident. Because of him and others, I quickly joined the Family Medicine Interest Group and also the NCAFP. For that Dr Lord, thank you.

I went on to attend my first winter conference here at the Grove Park Inn. Not many first-year students would come to this meeting back then. I remember less than 20 total students here. Someone special was also present at this meeting: Dr Maureen Murphy. She took us out to dinner the first night, told us how great Family Medicine was, and invited any of us who were interested to rotate with her in Sparta for Family Medicine rotations. Not only did I eventually do four months of rotations with her in medical school and residency -- including sleeping in an AHEC ‘old’ mobile home in the middle of a cow farm -- but ultimately experiences like that solidified my love for Family Medicine. For that Dr Murphy, thank you.

This is the NCAFP to me. A place where folks from all walks of life can come interact, meet, exchange ideas, and reaffirm why they currently are or will choose to be in Family Medicine. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my mentors. As l look out to see students, residents, fellows, and current family physicians, I am amazed of the collective power in this

room. We need to be here for each other. As healthcare quickly changes, Family Medicine will continue to be at the forefront of how we deliver care to our patients. We can only do that if we support, teach, and cultivate the love of Family Medicine to future generations of medical students.

My former NCAFP Student Scholars, Lucy and Brittany, both chose Family Medicine as their careers. Brittany Means, thank you for being here. My current medical student, Sophia, is also aspiring to go into Family Medicine. Sophia, thanks for being here as well. With my student scholars, I am 3 for 3! The more we teach, inspire them to love and appreciate what we do, the better we can succeed in ensuring they choose Family Medicine as their future career. This can’t happen without our NCAFP Foundation.

As a past executive member on the NCAFP Foundation, I realized here is where we need to focus our energies for our student programs. It is through our Foundation that we can ensure the great teaching and mentoring of future generations.

It is one of my personal goals next year to work closely with our Foundation to help finally grow our student endowment to a self-sustainable amount. It is only with enough funds that we can continue to innovate our student/resident programs for future generations. We should be proud of our profession, and teaching future generations the value of going into Family Medicine is utterly important.

The first goal is to encourage more preceptors to volunteer. We can work with our local medical schools to encourage innovative ways to precept. We can encourage medical schools to innovate their rotation curriculum to help community preceptors. In Charlotte, for example, our medical students are with us over a 6-month period once a week. We can work with other Family Medicine clinics in our areas to share students. We can work to encourage our local health systems to incentivize precepting, such as more dedicated time during the week, no penalties if your RVU’s decrease slightly during that month, and perhaps a stewardship metric for teaching built into your non-productivity pay for example. It is important that health systems know the importance of training future generations. We can continue to work at the state level within the legislature on creative ways to help with incentivizing precepting and mentoring.

We will also dedicate our efforts next year to growing our foundation's student endowment. In 2022, we will begin a fundraising campaign in hopes that we can get the endowment large enough to become self-sustaining. We understand that for this to succeed monies are needed. I am honored to help with this effort along with my former mentor and past president of the NCAFP Dr Maureen Murphy!! Personally, I pledge $5,000 next year to the Foundation to help continue and grow our amazing student programs.

With student activities, I also pledge to visit each medical school next year to meet with their local Family Medicine faculty, their Family Medicine Interest Group, and its leaders. It is here as well, that the sooner students are exposed to Family Medicine, the more likely they will choose it as a career. Our former student scholars program proved that.

As we move into value-based healthcare in 2022, the NCAFP must continue to be at the forefront in helping to educate our members and advocate for them. In the last 12 months, I transitioned out of being a health system employee, to becoming an independent MD under a collaborative partnership with Avance. Having now worked both sides of the aisle, both in hospital-based and independent Family Medicine, I feel better prepared to represent our voices in the NCAFP. From a health systems perspective, the NCAFP must continue to engage them to make sure the majority of value-based care dollars make their way to family physicians. We are the ones doing most of the value based metric work anyway!

We also need to continue to encourage collaborative care practices (like embedded counselors, dieticians, pharmacists, etc.) within our medical offices, both private and hospital-owned, to help drive down healthcare costs from costly referrals for common services.

Insurers need to encourage patients to seek

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