Report From the States

Help To Insure Our Future

Michael C. Vidas, MD

To insure the future of our Peoria County Medical Society, we keep our current members and recruit new members. To this end, we can look at what has recently transpired.

We have finally been able to give our membership the choice of national medical society membership. They can now choose to be a member of the American Medical Association (AMA) or the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), as well as their specialty organizations to represent them at the national level.

We have our county website (www.peomedsoc.org) to use for a directory of local physicians at only the cost of membership in the county medical society. We will soon have an on-line referral service that will cost nothing extra to the membership, and we will soon offer an on-line membership application.

The Peoria County Medical Society credentials physicians at the local level for three local hospitals. We represent physicians through the Illinois State Medical Society (ISMS) to lobby at the state level for the legislation that is important and vital to doctors and patients. We have placed posters in the hospital lounges showing them the legislation that has been passed and opposed and defeated. ISMS will also stand up for physicians against insurance companies with a new service, the Hassle Factor (you can download the Hassle Factor form at http://www.peomedsoc.org/hasslefactor.html).

Dr. Vidas is president of the Peoria County Medical Society.

The freedom to choose membership in either the AMA or AAPS at the level of the county medical society in your respective states is a great step forward! I hope other AAPS members can induce their county medical society to follow this example. ---Ed.

Originally published in the Medical Sentinel 2001;6(1);33. Copyright©2001 Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)