A Young Physician Promotes the Value of Organized Medicine

When Dr. Lenore DePagter first moved to San Marcos, Texas, she didn’t know much about the local medical society. But after calling around to find out where and when they met, she went to her first meeting.

When she arrived, she discovered what she describes as “a small group of very active, hard-working physicians, who had been in practice for 25 – 30 years and who had a lot to share with new physicians.”

“They welcomed me with open arms,” she says. “They were really great. My first or second meeting there I stood up and said, ‘I’d like to run for something.’”

Since that first meeting, she’s served as the Tri-County Medical Society’s secretary, treasurer, and a delegate to the Texas Medical Association (TMA). She has also initiated projects like developing the Tri-County Medical Society’s website, Facebook page, and Twitter feed. This year she worked to help pass the medical society’s new constitution and by-laws.

“The old by-laws were 20 years old and really outdated,” says Dr. DePagter.

To say that Dr. DePagter is an advocate of organized medicine is an understatement.

Not only has she been involved with the Tri-County Medical Society for the past four years, she’s also been an active member of TMA since she was a medical student. As a member of TMA, she has been an alternate delegate to the AMA, served on TMA’s Committee on Physician Distribution and Health Care Access, acts as Chair-Elect for the Young Physicians Section, and was Chair of the Credentials Committee for the 2010 House of Delegates.

This is in addition to her full-time job as Chief Medical Officer of the Texas State University Student Health Clinic, mentoring Texas State University students, and parenting 2-year-old twins.

Returning to Her Alma Mater

Dr. DePagter wasn’t always that driven and focused. When she first started college, at Texas State University, she thought she might major in music, but she didn’t really have a plan.

During Christmas break that year, everything changed. Her father, still in his 50s, suffered a heart attack and had open-heart surgery. “I was impressed by the surgeon and the staff who took care of him,” she says. “So I went back to school in January, walked straight to the pre-med advisor’s office, and changed my major to pre-med.”

Thankfully, her father fully recovered from his heart attack and surgery.

After medical school at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth, she completed her residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at Scott & White Memorial Hospital.

She worked in a private medical practice in Cedar Park for a year, and then at a community health center in South Austin for four years, before she landed her current job at the Student Health Center at Texas State University, her alma mater. The university, located in San Marcos, was an ideal location for her husband to commute to law school in nearby San Antonio.

Dr. DePagter has been at the clinic since 2006, and was recently promoted to Chief Medical Officer, supervising clinical staff, and laboratory and radiology services.

She likes working with college-age students — and it’s a good thing, because her clinic sees about 14,000 distinct patients (30,000 appointments) a year. She manages three other physicians and five nurse practitioners.

“It’s very rewarding because I’m very interested in this population, and I am also an alum of this school. I graduated in 1998, but I can still relate to campus culture and their experiences. Plus, the students are very motivated and educated. You can discuss what’s going on medically with them and they’ll understand and even go research it.”

A Community of Physicians

Dr. DePagter feels her involvement with TMA and the Tri-County Medical Society has helped her succeed in her career.

“People ask me, ‘Well, you don’t get paid for it, why do you go?’ But I get a lot out of it — like educational opportunities, networking opportunities, and also I just get to meet with really great people.”

Recently, she was able to draw on her contacts through TMA and the Tri-County Medical Society when she needed help getting on insurance plans. “I had a lot of questions about different networks, credentialing, and signing up on different insurance policies. So I was able to get a list of members and call them. I talked to 10 different doctors about their experiences with credentialing. So that was valuable to me.”

While she realizes that young physicians face obstacles, like long work hours, family obligations, and costs, she still thinks they are missing out if they don’t get involved in organized medicine.

“Medical societies have a lot to offer young physicians,” she says. “Attending meetings is a nice break from strictly doing clinical work all day. I like being able to go to conferences and see people who I’ve known for 15 years — we have a really strong community of physicians.”

She says her most important advice for other young physicians is to stay active in their community and not to become isolated. “Join a medical society. Go to meetings. Help organize something. And don’t be afraid to become active and do whatever you can.”

If you’d like to contact Dr. DePagter, e-mail her at ld15@txstate.edu.

Opening a Medical Practice? This Guide Can Help.

In medical school you learned about anatomy and diseases, not about insurance for your medical practice. That’s why TMAIT now offers a guide, A Practice of Your Own, to help you know what insurance you may need when you open your own medical practice.

The guide includes information like what type of insurance you may want to offer your employees — such as medical, life, long-term disability, vision, and dental.

It also offers information about other insurance to protect your business — like office overhead expense, critical illness, key person life and long-term disability, and life insurance buy-sell agreements.

Because providing group insurance for your employees is one of the biggest potential operating expenses for practice owners, the guide also offers suggestions on how to keep insurance expenses down.

See our complete guide on insurance for your practice at http://www.tmait.org/Publications/LifeStageCareerStage/index.html.

Four Texas Institutions Receive Grants to Help Implement Electronic Medical Records

In an effort to make health care more efficient, more cost-effective, and reduce medical errors, the federal government wants all Americans to have an electronic health record by 2014.

Not an easy task. And as physicians know, implementing electronic health records can be costly for medical practices, and frustrating for office staff.

But now help is on the way. Recently, the federal government awarded grants to four Texas institutions through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The grants will help to establish Health Information Technology Regional Extension Centers that will assist Texas physicians and their office staff with on-site technical assistance, vendor selection, group purchasing, electronic health records implementation, project management, and advice on ensuring privacy and security.

The grants include:

• $5,279,970 to the Texas A&M Health Science Center to develop an extension center for the East-Central region.
• $15,274,327 to the University of Houston Health Science Center to establish an extension center in the Gulf Coast region.
• $6,666,296 to the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center to help them serve the West Texas region.
• $8,488,515 to the Dallas-Forth Worth Hospital Council Education and Research Foundation to form the center to serve health care providers in North Texas.

Collectively, the Texas institutions received $35.7 million to develop these regional centers, and there is a collaborative working group to coordinate the efforts of all four centers.

To find out more about Regional Extension Centers, go to http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=1495&mode=2&cached=true.

Introducing TMAIT’s New Field Advisor

TMAIT is constantly looking for ways to better serve Texas physicians. That’s why we’ve recently added an Advisor, John Isgitt, to our team who can offer face-to-face consultations for medical practices, residency programs, and county medical societies. John has a master’s degree from Texas A&M University, and has more than 20 years of experience in the financial and insurance industries, most recently as an independent agent specializing in health, life, and long-term care insurance.

Whether your group is a current TMAIT customer, or you are looking for new insurance options for your group, John is available to meet with you to review your current suite of products and make recommendations based on your unique needs. If you’re a current TMAIT customer, John can provide reviews and support for your account on an ongoing basis.

As always, our other TMAIT Advisors will continue to be accessible by phone from 7:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.

If you’d like to contact John, you can reach him at 979.777.9351 or jisgitt@tmait.org.