7 minute read
County, Member & Specialty News
CMS & SPECIALTY NEWS
by Melissa Connor, Executive Director The DeKalb Medical Society (DMS) will host a free ‘Medical Cannabis in Georgia’ dinner meeting at the Druid Hills Golf Club in Atlanta from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday, August 6 – an event that was originally scheduled to take place on April 16. The event is being sponsored by Curaleaf (curaleaf. com), which is a medical cannabis company. The event will address Georgia’s medical cannabis laws, the medical conditions that are covered by Georgia’s medical cannabis laws, the steps a physician needs to take to “certify” that a patient has one of the conditions that are covered by Georgia’s law, and the steps that low-THC/CBD oil producers are taking to ensure patient safety. Contact Melissa Connor at mconnor@pami.org to make a reservation, which is required.
Bibb County Medical Society
by Dale Mathews, Executive Director The Bibb County Medical Society’s (BCMS) meeting in February featured an outstanding risk coding
BCMS President-elect Dr. Cameka Scarborough with Dr. Ronnie Smith following his presentation in February. presentation by Ronnie R. Smith, M.D., MBA. He discussed how practices should code for patient risk to be reimbursed accordingly. Dr. Smith is a primary care physician in Vidalia, and he is a well-known coding expert. The BCMS members and their office staff that attended the meeting said that the presentation was “really interesting,” and they asked numerous questions. Go to www.bibbphysicians.org or contact Dale Mathews at bibbphysicians@gmail.com for information on BCMS.
SPECIALTY SOCIETY NEWS Atlanta Association for Dermatology and Dermatologic Surgery
by Maryann B. McGrail, CAE, CMP, Executive Director The Atlanta Association for Dermatology and Dermatologic Surgery (AADDS) will hold CME activities on July 14, September 12, and October 27. Contact Maryann McGrail at maryann@ theassociationcompany. com for details. Go to www. atlantaderm.org for additional information on AADDS.
Georgia Chapter of the American College of Cardiology
The Georgia Chapter of the American College of Cardiology (GA-ACC) will reschedule its ‘Southeast WIC Conference’ as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to event co-chairs Gina Lundberg, M.D., FACC, and Alison Bailey, M.D., FACC. GA-ACC has also cancelled the ‘Cardiovascular Update’ meeting that was scheduled to take place in Athens in May. This event will now take place at Callaway Gardens on April 21-25, 2021. Contact Melissa Connor at mconnor@pami.org with questions or to join GA-ACC.
Georgia Gastroenterologic and Endoscopic Society
The annual Georgia Gastroenterologic and Endoscopic Society (GGES) meeting for 2020 is scheduled for September 12 at the W Midtown Atlanta. For more information or to join GGES, visit www.ggesonline.org.
Georgia Society of Dermatology and Dermatologic Surgery
by Maryann B. McGrail, CAE, CMP, Executive Director The Georgia Society Dermatology and Dermatologic Surgery (GSDDS) has rescheduled its annual ‘Congress of Clinical Dermatology’ at the Hilton Sandestin for August 28-30, 2020. Contact Maryann McGrail at maryann@ theassociationcompany.com for details. Go to www.gaderm. org for additional information on GSDDS.
Submit your county medical society, member or specialty society news to Tom Kornegay at tkornegay@mag.org. Also contact Kornegay with any corrections, which will run in the next edition of the Journal. The Journal reserves the right to edit submissions for length and clarity. Bolding recognizes the physicians who are active MAG members at the time the Journal was prepared. Go to www.mag.org/membership to renew your MAG membership.
MAG mourns loss of former President Roy W. Vandiver, M.D.
The Medical Association of Georgia (MAG) is mourning the loss of Roy W. Vandiver, M.D., who served as MAG’s president in 1993-1994. Having joined Atlanta Neurosurgical Associates, Dr. Vandiver practiced neurosurgery for more than 30 years at Emory Decatur Hospital (then DeKalb General and later DeKalb Medical) and Eastside Medical Center. In addition to his MAG leadership roles, Dr. Vandiver was MagMutual’s chairman from 1999 to 2011, and he was the president of the DeKalb Medical Society, the chairman of the Georgia Neurosurgical Society, a member of the DeKalb Hospital Authority, and the chairman of the board of the American Medical Association’s Political Action Committee. Dr. Vandiver graduated from the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. He is survived by his wife, Maureen, three sons, and six grandchildren. Memorial contributions can be made to the DeKalb Medical Oncology Fund at www. supportmedicine.emory.edu/ Vandiver and/or the Global Village Project at www. globalvillageproject.org.
PERSPECTIVE
On slowing down
My wife and I were riding bikes when we first saw the owls, high up in the crook of a massive live oak tree heavily draped with Spanish moss. The owlets were fuzzy things, wide-eyed and staring, their heads swiveling about nearly 360 degrees in a manner that seemed to defy biology as they took in the new world around them. Their parents were a broad-winged pair of Great Horned Owls, with fishhook talons and saffron beaks, soaring silently from limb to limb and tree to tree in unaccustomed daylight. One of the parents fluttered overhead and landed by the nest, bringing food to the owlets. Seeing that was spectacular. I was off early that day because a couple of my telemedicine visits had cancelled. During a “normal” week, I would never have been home early enough to see the owls. I’m usually up at 4 a.m. and doing procedures by 6:30 a.m., working through lunch and often into darkness, without respite, adapting to the unrelenting needs of a patient population who demand my ready availability. But not now. An unseen enemy has humbled me. The novel coronavirus SARS CoV-2 has reordered my life, restructured my days, and reminded me of that fundamental truth which I should have already known all too well: That we, and the entire society we live in, are made of very fragile stuff. Life is precious and miraculous, and yet we take it for granted, every aspect of it, assuming the false pretense of our own immortality while simultaneously failing to recognize how intrinsically connected we all are, both to one another and to the amazing planet we live on. In 1972, MIT meteorology professor Edward Lorenz presented a paper which posed the question, “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” The idea Lorenz was positing became widely known as an explanation of chaos theory called “The Butterfly Effect.” The modern epidemiologic version of The Butterfly Effect is this: A single strand of RNA, encapsulated in an envelope of protein, made the jump in December 2019 from a creature of another species to one of our own in Wuhan, China. The rest is history. That first COVID-19 patient never knew what it was that he had. We don’t know his name, what he looked like, or even whether he lived or died. But his illness has changed the entire world. It is unprecedented and cataclysmic, a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Mark Murphy, M.D.
My grandmother used to say that, “Every cloud has a silver lining, if you look hard enough.” It’s certainly hard to find a silver lining in all of this, with millions of people sick, thousands dying, and many, many people out of work. But sure enough, as we were biking back home after seeing the owls on a warm, sun-dappled Spring day, I found it. Seeing the owls made me realize that having an opportunity to slow down and absorb some of the world’s beauty is not such a bad thing. Tiny miracles like that one surround us every day, but we are often too busy or too distracted to appreciate them. To be certain, these are trying times. The threat of contracting COVID-19 is always there, lurking about in the shadows. My medical practice is going to be financially stressed for months, and perhaps longer. But I am blessed with a loving spouse, healthy children and grandchildren, and the opportunity to help others at work every day. All of this has given me a renewed perspective about what is truly important in life – and about what is not. In recent years, encouraged by the influence of social media, people have tended to be tribalistic, emphasizing their differences instead of focusing on the shared aspects of the human condition. The practice of medicine has taught me that human beings are actually far more alike than they are different – a viewpoint the pandemic has only reinforced. Perhaps, as we make this collective journey through the dark realm of pestilence, we will begin to understand that our species’ shared destiny links us all inextricably to one another. And perhaps amongst all of the virally-induced heartache, we will more readily comprehend that the fate of Homo sapiens sapiens as a species is largely dependent upon how much we care for each other – and upon our avid stewardship of that singular blue orb, careening through the vast emptiness of space, that we all call home. Dr. Murphy is a Savannah gastroenterologist, a longtime MAG member, and a former president of the Georgia Medical Society.
