STATE OF THE ACADEMY
August 8, 2003
FAPA General Membership Meeting
St. Pete Beach, Florida
Ron Pace, PA-C
President, FAPA

Members of the Board of Directors, FAPA Members, Dr. Moritsugu, and honored guests. It is my pleasure to present to you a brief report on the state of the Academy.

First, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the members of the Board of Directors for their support this year as your President. As the President of such an organization I have viewed myself as a facilitator for the most part. My job has been to coordinate the activities of the Board of Directors of this Academy. It is through their efforts and hard work that I am able to report that the Academy is in an excellent state of affairs at this time. And they have been strongly supported in their efforts by the Areas Representatives and an excellent Headquarters staff. This is truly a team effort in managing the affairs and finances of the Academy. And I thank you one and all.

As you have seen from the report from our Treasurer we are in sound financial condition at this time. This is the result of proper planning by the Financial Affairs committee under the leadership of Ben Walton. Last fall the Board was faced with some tough budget decisions and we did what we had to do to protect the financial status of the Academy. I cannot even balance my own checkbook, never have and never will most likely, but your Board was able to put together a sound budget approaching half a million dollars. We worked hard to plan for all the activities and necessary functions of this Academy and to be able to tell you that we have been acting appropriately in our fiduciary responsibilities to the members of this Academy is something that I am very proud of at this time.

We may not have had a stellar year in the legislature, but then neither did anyone else. It boggles my mind - a Republican Governor, a Republican majority in the House and Senate and still they were not able to accomplsih diddly squat. Beats the hell out of me, but it just reaffirms in my mind that politics is not by bag of tea for sure.

But we did manage to keep any legislation from passing that would have restricted our practice in any specialty. It seems funny to say this, but having nothing done was a major accomplishment for us. And for this we owe a debt of gratitude to Juhan and Pat Mixon and their firm, Mixon and Associates for their hard work in Tallahassee in our behalf. They worked 6-7 days a week for almost three months in their efforts to protect us.

We did manage to get one piece of legislation passed this year. It allows PAs to sign the FDLE physical examination forms. The law now specifically states that physicians and physician assistants may sign the form.

All this was accomplished through our PRIDE campaign, Practice Rights Immediate Defense Effort. This involved creation of an educational portfolio to give to legislators and the production of the FAPA PA Profession Informational DVD. We appreciate the financial support of this campaign that many of you contributed to that helped us raise over $13,500 to pay for the PRIDE campaign. If you have not made the decision to donate to this fund I would urge you to do so since our battles are not over and we will need to continue to educate legislators and their staff members this fall in an effort to protect out practice act from over zealous efforts to limit us from what some feel is an effort to increase our scope of practice. I could talk for hours alone on that subject. (The DVD was shown at this time.)

I can tell you now that I have three weeks ago met with the current President of the Florida Society of Dermatology and Dermatologic surgery, Dr. Perniciaro, and had some frank discussions of the issues. He has invited our Board to provide his organization with approprite language to help solve the supervision issues in the practice of dermatology. I have been invited to address their Board in September at their meeting. I will be working with our Board to develop recommendations in this matter. I can promise you that we will not accept to be part of to any proposal that will unfairly limit PA practice rights in any specialty. This is a physician issue and not a PA issue. But convincing the powers that be of that fact is a monumental task. In politics, I have come to realize that what is fair, right, logical or approprite does not mean anything in reality. It is who knows who, who is willing to wheel and deal, who contributes to who and how much, and the bottom line is the bottom line. Money is what it is all about. And that is the sad truth of the matter.

The Florida Academy continues to maintain an excellent reputation as a contributor to health care in Florida. We were asked this year to participate in several seminars and programs sponsored by state agencies. We were asked to partner with two university groups in seeking federal grants for projects on bioterrorism education for our profession.

We continue to provide excellent benefits to our members that include the website as one of the best in the nation among AAPA chapters; our newsletter is getting better and better; our CME conferences are among the top rated ones in the nation; long term care insurance; financial planning assistance from several reputable firms; and a headquaters staff second to none in the nation, and I was told this time and time again when I was in DC earlier this month for a leadership conference.

And obviously we are doing something right as we were awarded the AAPA Constituent Organization Award of Excellence in the Extra large Chapter group for the third time in our history, and for the second year in a row. I give special thanks and recognition to President Elect Jeff Hulley for his efforts in preparing the application for this award. And yes, Jack Foard, we want a threepeat. Give yourselves a round f applause for you all contributed to this award.

So where do we go from here? Well obviously I am from the south and of course Cracker Barrel is one of my favorite places for breakfast on the weekends once in a while. It reminds me of those good ol' southern breakfasts that my momma used to make for us on sunday mornings. The grits, the gravy, the apple butter, hot homemade biscuits, bacon, country ham with redeye gravy, scramnbled eggs,fried chicken, hot coffee, cold juice, and ice cold milk. Yum, yum, yum. And obviously I did not miss too awful many of those breakfasts, and still don't dammit. Now you are asking yourselves - where the hell is he going with this?

Well, like our Academy, there are a number of important components to making the "breakfast", ie., the Academy, a successful adventure. I would suggest to you that the chicken makes an important contribution to that meal, but the pig,.....the pig, he really commits to it. So plain and simple, FAPA needs a few more pigs, and less chickens.

We are going to present to you in the next couple of months a plan to fight those that would seek in the next legislative session to limit our practice rights. This will involve a couple of things that will require action on your part, from all of you.

First, we need you to make a donation to the PAC, and to the PRIDE campaign, In order to have influence with legislators it is going to costs money and if we do not get it, we cannot get the job done and we will risk losing it, plain and simple.

Second, we are going to ask you to go to visit your legislators at home and talk with them on the issues. We will prepare a packet and a guide to help you. Legislators love to hear from their constituents.

Thirdly, we need you to talk to PAs who are not FAPA members and get them to join us. Numbers are important as I have told you on several occasions in the past. If a legislator knows there are some 3000 PAs in this state and and only 1400 are are fellow FAPA members it. It will make us a much stronger and a more formidable partner to say we have 2000 or more members.

So now you know the meaning of the cards on the table. (Cards with a chicken and a pig) Which are you going to be in the future - a chicken of a pig?

I am calling you to come to the table and make a committment. Be a pig for a change. It is time for you to become more active and help us to help you and help us to help you to help ourselves. No one else is going to do it for us, and it is us alone to help our neighbors. It is up to us and us alone. Thank You.