by Ken Datzman at Brevard Business News
As part of their education, physicians spend four years in medical school and three to five years in residency training. For the rest of their careers, they rely on accredited continuing medical education as one of the support systems that helps them continuously improve their practice, while staying up–to–date on the latest trends in their field.
And one longtime local medical association has been at the forefront of providing a CME format for physicians and health–care professionals to receive this type of education. The wide–ranging CME lectures typically feature top speakers in various practice specialties. Twice a year, the Brevard Indo–American Medical and Dental Association or BIMDA, a nonprofit entity with statewide visibility, brings physicians, dentists, and other health–care professionals together in a convenient location to participate in such a program.
“The CME initiative is a major part of this organization,” said BIMDA Vice President Dr. Pavan Kancharla, a medical oncologist with Cancer Care Centers of Brevard, part of the nationwide US Oncology Network. “We really rely on the CME component of BIMDA and we want to help educate more physicians in the region through the conference this spring.”
“One area where we strive to continue to grow the conference is through participation by more doctors,” added Glad Kurian, the honorary executive director and one of the founders of BIMDA, an educational and charitable organization. “If you don’t have the doctors attending, the value is not there. So, the conference is for the doctors and by the doctors.” He continued, “We are very fortunate in that we have the support of the Brevard County Medical Society, and the medical staff offices of every hospital system in the county — Health First, Parrish Medical Center, and Steward Health Care System. We have great relationships with those organizations, as well as others, including HealthSouth Sea Pines Rehabilitation Hospital, Kindred Healthcare, home– health agencies, practice–management companies, and a lot of supporters from the pharmaceutical industry, and other closely aligned businesses. We have a niche market with our target audience.”
On Jan. 2, HealthSouth Corp. completed its planned name change to Encompass Health Corp. The signage transition to the new name will begin in April and continue throughout 2018. Steward Health Care owns Rockledge Regional Medical Center and Melbourne Regional Medical Center, both formerly under the Wuesthoff Health System, and Sebastian River Medical Center. Health First operates Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne, Palm Bay Hospital, Viera Hospital, and Cape Canaveral Hospital in Cocoa Beach. Titusville–based Parrish Medical Center has offices in Port St. John, Port Canaveral, and Melbourne. The impact of physicians that are affiliated with all of these hospitals and who have their own private practices extends beyond safeguarding the health and welfare of their patients.
A new study by the American Medical Association says physicians “add opportunity, growth, and prosperity” to the economy by creating 12.6 million jobs and generating $2.3 trillion in economic impact. And the activity begins at the community level, with each physician generating $3.2 million of economic impact on average. The report found that every dollar applied to physician services supports an additional $2.84 in other business activity. An additional 11 jobs — above and beyond the clinical and administrative personnel that work inside a physician practice — are supported for each $1 million of revenue generated by a physician’s practice.
Physicians’ contribution to the national economy generates $92.9 billion in state and local tax revenue for their communities — translating to $126,129 for each physician on average — enabling community investments to be made. The report is titled “The National Economic Impact of Physicians” and is broken down state–by–state. In Florida, the total economic activity generated by physicians is $113.8 billion. The average economic total generated by each physician is $2.5 million. And the direct economic activity generated by physicians in Florida is $50.9 billion. The direct number of jobs supported by physicians in the Sunshine State is 218,406. The indirect number is 455,277. The average number of jobs supported by each physician is 14.8.
Looking ahead, physicians will have an opportunity to further drive the economy. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services just announced the launch of a new voluntary bundled payment model to improve quality. Under the traditional fee–for–service payment, Medicare pays providers for each individual service they perform. With this new bundled payment model, participants can earn additional payment if all expenditures for a “beneficiary’s episode of care” are under a spending target that factors in quality.
“As an organization, BIMDA will be working to help educate physicians regarding the new Medicare payment models that are coming, including the quality initiatives and the incentives for better outcomes,” said Dr. Kancharla. “We want to make sure physicians understand the new changes that are set to be implemented in 2019 by CMS.”
BIMDA’s spring Expo and CME Conference is set for Saturday, May 5, at the Hilton Melbourne Rialto Place. The event will get underway at 7:30 in the morning with CME lectures and will close out in the evening with a Gala.
“I have been associated with BIMDA since I moved here from New York in 2006,” said Dr. Rajasri Krishnamurthy, an internal medicine practitioner with the Health First Medical Group. “The first big event I went to in Brevard County was a BIMDA conference and social gathering. That’s where I came to know a lot of my colleagues from the various practice specialties, and I have been coming to these events ever since. The continuing medical education program is a big attraction of the conference. I always look forward to it, along with the Gala.”
Dr. Krishnamurthy’s training includes having completed a nine–month post–graduate research fellowship in neurology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Her husband, Dr. Aravind Kumar is a former president of BIMDA.
Dr. Dinesh Patel, a cardiologist with Charles Croft M.D., PA., moved to Melbourne one year ago from Jacksonville, where he was practicing, and became involved with BIMDA. “I thought one of the best ways for me to become better acquainted with physicians in this region was through BIMDA and the events it holds,” said Dr. Patel. “When I joined BIMDA, it presented me the opportunity to have a lot more exposure to the practicing physicians in the different fields around the county, all the way north to Titusville and all the way south to Sebastian and Indian River. And BIMDA’s continuing medical education program covers the different specialties in medicine, with various experts making presentations. It’s a very convenient and effective format for area doctors to earn CMEs.”
Participation in an accredited CME offering helps physicians meet requirements for maintaining their licensure and specialty board certification, as well as credentialing, membership in professional societies, and holding other privileges in their field.
Dr. Kancharla is in charge of recruiting speakers for BIMDA’s 2018 Expo and CME Conference. The program will feature five CME topics, including one on oncology. “We are planning to have a renowned speaker from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., at our event,” he said. “From an oncology standpoint, we are going to focus on multiple myeloma, which is a devastating blood cancer. Some of the new advances that are benefiting patients will be highlighted, and how the outcomes have changed significantly over the last few years because of new treatment options for multiple myeloma patients.”
Multiple myeloma is a type of blood cancer that affects the plasma cells, said Dr. Kancharla. In multiple myeloma, malignant plasma cells accumulate in the bone marrow, “crowding out” the normal plasma cells that help fight infection.
Multiple myeloma is the second most common blood cancer, and although it is considered incurable, it is very much a treatable disease, thanks to recent advancements in cancer research.
Cancer mortality in the U.S. continues its decades–long decline, according to the “Cancer Statistics 2018,” the American Cancer Society’s comprehensive annual report on cancer incidence, mortality and survival. The cancer death rate dropped 1.7 percent from 2014 to 2015, continuing a downward trend that began in 1991.
The report estimates that there will be 1.7 million new cancer cases and 609,640 cancer deaths in the United States in 2018. The cancer death rate dropped 26 percent from its peak of 215.1 per 100,000 population in 1991 to 158.6 per 100,000 in 2015.
A significant proportion of the drop is because of steady reductions in smoking and advances in early detection and treatment of cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. “Cancer treatments have changed greatly in the last four or five years, with new modalities of treatment such as immunotherapy. Treatments are a lot more advanced today in terms of medical oncology,” said Dr. Kancharla.
Immunotherapy refers to any treatment that uses the immune systems to fight diseases, including cancer. Unlike chemotherapy, which kills cancer cells, immunotherapy acts on the cells of the immune system to help them attack the cancer, Dr. Kancharla said.
The most common causes of cancer death are lung, prostate, and colorectal cancers in men, and lung, breast, and colorectal cancers in women. These four cancers account for 45 percent of all cancer deaths, the report says. Medicine, in general, is making advancements that are extending the lives of patients. “My field has dramatically changed over the last 10 years,” said Dr. Biju Mathews, an interventional cardiologist with Parrish Medical Center and a member of BIMDA. “One of the biggest advancements has been in the area of aortic valve replacement.” “We perform a procedure called transcatheter aortic valve replacement, or TAVR, to replace a damaged aortic heart valve. And we do it through the leg. TAVR is a big advance in the field as far as heart disease is concerned.”
TAVR is an alternative for inoperable or high surgical–risk patients with aortic stenosis, the most commonly acquired valvular disease in adults. This innovative approach replaces the aortic valve without open–heart surgery. Instead, the valve is replaced using a catheter that is threaded through vessels in the leg into the aorta and then the heart. Once the new valve is expanded, “it pushes the old valve leaflets out of the way and the replacement valve resumes the job of regulating blood flow between the heart and the body.” The TAVR procedure was first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2011.
Parrish Medical Center’s Cardiovascular Care program also offers “transradial catheterizations,” which reduces recovery time, improves patient outcomes, and lowers hospital and health–care costs. Dr. Mathews was one of the physicians who established North Brevard’s first Transradial Catherization program years ago. “Rather than going through the leg to get to the heart of the patient, we go through the arm. The patient goes home one to two hours after the procedure.” Transradial cardiac catherization is a procedure used to treat and diagnose certain heart conditions. The radial artery is a blood vessel in the arm.
Following the CME lectures, and the other parts of the program, will be a Gala for BIMDA members and their spouses, as well as sponsors of the event. “People look forward to the Gala,” said Kurian, a vice president with Morgan Stanley in Melbourne. “Each Gala is different. No two events at BIMDA are the same. We are always re–enginering the concept. That’s what makes it exciting year after year.”
