President Message - William Jih, M.D. January 21, 2025 General SBCMS President Message 0 A MESSAGE FROM OUR SBCMS PRESIDENT - DR. WILLIAM JIH (Download PDF copy HERE) January 21, 2025 Happy New Year!! As we usher in 2025, I’d like to welcome our new members to the SBCMS (San Bernardino County Medical Society) + CMA (California Medical Association) family and welcome back our renewing members. We can hardly wait to work with you this year on ways to strengthen healthcare policy. We are eager to continue to craft solutions together to improve the future of your medical practice and the landscape for all health providers in increasing access to quality care for patients. As we forge ahead, I want to provide you with updates about our plans and priorities for the year. MEDI-CAL REIMBURSEMENT INCREASES and PROP. 35 We are excited to work with the California Medical Association and DHCS (California Department of Health Care Services) to implement Proposition 35 which was approved on the November, 2024 ballot to lock in permanent funding for Medi-Cal. In short, the measure will dedicate an improved payment structure to woefully underfunded Medi-Cal provider reimbursements in California. We are grateful to so many of you who were part of the coalition led by the CMA to achieve victory for Prop. 35, which addresses and confronts challenges in health equity, at long last. This monumental initiative will fund healthcare access through a permanent $6.5 to $8 billion investment each year, bringing about a historic level of funding for Medi-Cal care delivery, precluding the designated funding from being swept into the general fund. Areas most favorably impacted include primary care, specialty care, emergency care, behavioral health facilities, community and outpatient procedures, public hospitals, graduate medical education and Medi-Cal Workforce. We welcome your engagement and input in the discussion surrounding Prop. 35 implementation, something we expect to gain significant traction as the year progresses. MITIGATING MEDICARE PROVIDER CUTS As many of you know, we were “this close” to Congressional approval of the curtailment of the 2.8% Medicare physician reimbursement cuts in the December, 2024 continuing resolution, with intense efforts by physicians (thank you all) and CMA government relations staff throughout the past months. Unfortunately, in a devastating move for Medicare physicians and patients, the language from the bipartisan deal reached earlier in December that would have stopped most of the Medicare physician payment cut was stripped out of the final bill. Therefore, the 2.8% Medicare payment cut has gone into effect on January 1, 2025. However, we have resolved to redouble our efforts. We are demanding that Congress reverse these cuts by the upcoming March 14, 2025 Congressional vote to ensure our patients can get the care they need when they need it. Based on the input from Congressional partners, we are optimistic that we can impact the outcome favorably. We need your help in not letting up the gas on this collective advocacy effort. (Read more HERE). PRIOR AUTHORIZATION REFORM AND CMA LEGISLATIVE CONFERENCE SBCMS physicians along with CMA physicians and our colleagues from around the state will again prioritize legislation to secure prior authorization reform in California. The legislation did not advance in the last session, therefore, we are already laying the groundwork to achieve reform through policy that will alleviate physicians’ administrative burden and stop endangering patients’ lives. We encourage you to join us in Sacramento for this year’s CMA Legislative Day, April 9, 2025, where we will be personally meeting with legislators to communicate our priorities about prior auth reform and other legislative exigencies and share stories that will educate and resonate with legislators. Your voice matters. (Contact: Soteria Cobb at sobb@sbcms.org). ANNUAL HIGH DESERT MEETING FEBRUARY 26, 2025 One of our most interactive, exciting and beneficial events of the year, our annual SBCMS High Desert Meeting will take place on Wednesday, February 26 at 6 p.m. in Hesperia. This is a dynamic opportunity for physicians, medical groups, hospital leadership, and business partners and vendors to come together to catapult what we do to the next level. We are thrilled to be hosting a social hour with exhibitors followed by a buffet dinner and a program with CMA President-Elect, Rene Bravo, MD. We strongly encourage you to attend this meeting as it’s an exceptional networking event with leadership from SBCMS and CMA that occupies an important position in our physicians’ professional development agenda. (Register HERE). SBCMS COMMITTEES Our Membership Committee Chair and SBCMS Treasurer, Shantharam Pai, M.D., recently launched a membership committee. They meet quarterly, and we encourage anyone who is interested to join the discussion! (Contact: Soteria Cobb at sobb@sbcms.org). We are also planning to launch a physician wellness committee, which we will be announcing soon. EDUCATIONAL OFFERINGS FOR PHYSICIANS Last fall, SBCMS collected and analyzed survey results from many of you who indicated that you would like to see increased educational outreach. We listened, and, as a result, we have an even more robust schedule of education sessions planned for 2025, including a clinical education series to connect primary care providers with specialists (thank you from IEHP for their support), our ongoing series of climate health webinars and planned in-person Climate Conference on May 30, and other webinars and in-person workshops around a variety of topics. Many of the sessions offer CME. We look forward to having you as well as your staff members sign up! (Register HERE). ***************************************** The common thread to all of our outreach and projects is that the impact is much more effective when we partner. Our efforts are magnified, our message is focused, and our results are enduring. It’s a formula for success. We need your engagement, and we are excited to work side by side with you to bring about transformation to the future of health care. Thank you for your steadfast commitment to patients and the community. I look forward to seeing you soon. Please contact me at any time (willjih@yahoo.com), and again, Happy New Year to you! Sincerely, William Jih, M.D. President, San Bernardino County Medical Society 2024-25 Family Physician, Loma Linda University Health Comments are closed.
