BCMS Chief Governmental and
Community Relations Officer
Last week, several BCMS
physicians gathered in a phone conference to discuss BCMS'
partnership with the Border Health Caucus (BHC), including ideas to
recruit more physicians from San Antonio to participate in BHC
meetings and activities and to reaffirm our society's
commitment to the BHC.
Many thanks to the following BCMS members who
participated in the call: M. Antonieta Gonzalez, MD; David Henkes,
MD; Jesse Moss Jr., MD; John Nava, MD, and BCMS President Gabriel
Ortiz, MD.
Eleven years ago, this coming
May, the BHC was established in San Antonio. Antonio Cavazos
Jr., MD, was one of the founding members of the BHC, an informal,
ad-hoc caucus composed of several county medical societies,
currently representing approximately 9,000 physicians, including:
El Paso CMS; Val Verde CMS; Maverick CMS; Tri-County (Webb,
Jim Hogg, Zapata) CMS; Hidalgo-Starr CMS; Cameron-Willacy
CMS; Nueces CMS; and BCMS.
The BHC was created in an effort
to bring special attention to the myriad of health issues and
concerns that patients and physicians along the border face each day
and how these border health concerns eventually travel north.
Manuel Acosta, MD, a general surgeon in private practice in El Paso
and also chairman of the BHC, stated: "The leadership
potential in South Texas and the border is virtually limitless. To
survive in tough practice areas with a myriad of challenges is what
helps this region of Texas to thrive."
San Antonio is unique in the
sense that it most closely mirrors many of the same
patient-physician issues currently affecting our friends along the
border. In effect, the border has a cultural, symbiotic
relationship with San Antonio. Adding to San Antonio's uniqueness is
the fact that back in 2003, the passage of tort reform was won by
30,000 votes; from El Paso to Brownsville and from Corpus Christi
to San Antonio, more than 15,000 of the positive votes came from
below IH-10 south and IH-37. Perhaps for some of these reasons, San
Antonio is referred to at times as "the gateway to South
Texas."
A number of things are affecting
San Antonio in a positive way; for example, the Eagle Ford Shale
project, trade from Mexico, etc. The success of activities such as
these is what's going to drive San Antonio to a larger presence
statewide and beyond. Add to that the number of patients who may
travel from the border to San Antonio for medical care, and
you have an economic impact to this city coming from South
Texas and the border. This further heightens San Antonio and Bexar
County's presence and importance to effectively communicate the
geographic mind-set of the Border Health Caucus and how it
translates to the border area and the rest of the state and to
Washington, DC.
Some exciting events are on tap,
including the Eighth Annual Border Health Conference,
which will be in McAllen in August. Congressman Henry
Cuellar, who hails from Laredo, is leading the conference and, as
his congressional district includes San Antonio, this, too, further
defines San Antonio as a developing force within the BHC.
Stay tuned to
this column for more information on the upcoming Border Health
Conference.
For more
information on the BHC,
contact Mary
Nava by email at mary.nava@bcms.org.
