This is an important time for neurology, both nationally and more locally here in Massachusetts. There are many changes on the horizon, both clinically and politically. Our field is an exciting and evolving one, with many new advances and treatments becoming available to our patients every year. In this setting, it will be important to stay up to date with the latest options available across the many sub-specialties of neurology. Also importantly, the regulatory and reimbursement landscape is changing and we as neurologists will clearly be affected.
The Massachusetts Neurologic Association has been in existence for more than 35 years and we have refined our activities over the years to best provide knowledge, advocacy, and representation for our member neurologists.
At this point, we have 2 CME granting conferences yearly. Our Spring Annual Meeting is the larger of the two and has been growing over time. We are working hard to engage additional neurologists in the state and we have also been focusing on reaching out to young neurologists still in residency or fellowship. We are pleased that our last meeting had many residents and fellows presenting posters to the group. This meeting also had our largest turnout in many years. We hope to continue this trend moving forward by working to organize conferences with engaging speakers and topics relevant to practicing neurologists. Along these lines, we welcome input into future topics that any of you may be interested in hearing about.
There are many non-clinical issues that are important to practicing neurologists as well, including topics such as physician burnout, maintenance of certification, reimbursement, insurance issues in practice (prior authorizations, etc), and the ever changing reporting requirements for Medicare. I hope to further involve the MNA in advocating for the rights and values of neurologists as the policies related to these topics shift over time. Through our affiliation with the Massachusetts Medical Society, we can also work to advocate for neurologists within the greater medical community in the state. We are currently helping to support a bill in the MA legislature to simplify and better define step therapy for anti-seizure medications and hope to continue working on other legislation in the future. This is good for our patients and our member neurologists.
As the President for the next 2 years, I also hope to work with our Social Media Committee to increase our presence on the web. Currently our website: http://massneuro.org has some great information for patients and physicians. I hope to increase the use of this website, hopefully with interactive discussions of policies and anonymized patient cases where advice is sought. We also have a Facebook page (Facebook.com/massneuro) and a Twitter account (@massneuro). I would encourage you all to follow us on these platforms. I would also like to work on aggregating active clinical trials on our site. We have the benefit of many superb academic medical centers in our state, with massive amounts of research going on daily. However, the studies that may be available to our patients are not always easily discoverable. I hope to streamline this process so that we may be better able to serve our patients.
This is an exciting time to be a neurologist and I encourage you to continue your membership in the MNA, and to refer your colleagues as well. We are working hard to be the voice for the practicing neurologists in Massachusetts.
Marcus Yountz, MD
President, MNA (Summer of 2017)