Dawn of a New Era

From the vestiges of the Norfolk Academy of Medicine, Chesapeake Medical Society, and the Virginia Beach Medical Society, an entirely new society has formed from the merger of those three organizations. The new Coastal Virginia Medical Society (CVMS) has been built from the ground up and bears little resemblance to its predecessors. This is a society developed by and for physicians and their families for three purposes primarily: 1. Advocating for better professional careers, 2. Making improvements in the local healthcare system, and 3. Enhancing social networking.

CVMS intends to create and sustain a dynamic and personal physician community for the benefit of better healthcare in eastern Virginia. Utilizing our collective voice, we can make changes at the local and state level to substantively reduce unnecessary workloads, paperwork, computer work, testing delays, overcrowded hospitals, and multiple other barriers to good patient care. By initiating and supporting programs that will make more resources available to members, by creating proposals and recommendations to the Medical Society of Virginia and to the state legislature, and by promoting social relationships among physicians and families, we can make coastal Virginia a better place to practice medicine.

Physicians all across the nation have been bought out and subjugated to the control of big business, health insurance companies and government overregulation to the point where we have almost no say in what happens to ourselves or our patients. This must change if we want our broken and fragmented healthcare system to improve. There needs to be a switch in focus to protect and preserve our physicians and their guardianship of patient care.

Currently the emphasis is on fiscal and financial goals, funneling billions of Medicare dollars into large “health management” corporations to the detriment of patients and healthcare providers. It’s no secret that the number of physicians is dwindling rapidly across all specialties. Access to care is worse than ever. Our emergency rooms are way overcrowded. 25% of physicians are “burned out”, not because they are mentally ill, but because they are caught in a moral dilemma of wanting to do a good job in taking care of patients but not being able to because of serious defects in the system. And yet we spend more dollars per capita on healthcare than any other nation on earth. This is not working. We are going in the wrong direction.

Physicians need to step up to the plate. We’ve been too complacent for too long. We need to be brought into the decision-making processes that control healthcare with a laser point focus on healing ourselves and improving the welfare of our patients.

But we can’t do it individually. We must work together. This is why we need medical societies. There is strength in numbers. If one person complains, nothing happens. If 2000 physicians in coastal Virginia complain loudly enough, perhaps someone will listen.

So, if you are a physician and wish to join an organization that has your back, that fights for your rights, that provides more resources and benefits than you’ve ever had before and that also provides a venue for you and your family to enjoy a variety of social activities (not just your average boring dinner meeting), please join us!