PRESIDENT’S REPORT: The State of the Marin Medical Society

Irina deFischer, MD

I have been involved with the Marin Medical Society for close to 25 years, and during that time I have seen a number of changes. In my first term as president in the mid-90s, we had multiple active committees that reported to the board of directors at its monthly meetings, along with several well-attended social events, including the holiday dinner-dance at the Meadow Club, the spring wine-and-cheese at the Art and Garden Center, and the annual membership dinner at the yacht club. Over the years, attendance at these events began to dwindle, and some of them had to be cancelled. Is it that younger physicians just aren’t “joiners,” or that we’ve all gotten too busy to spend our precious free time with our colleagues? Or is it that our membership has become divided, and that we feel we have little in common?

 

I am a strong believer that county medical societies, along with the California Medical Association, have the potential to bring together physicians of all specialties and practice modes to advocate for the good of our patients and the profession, in ways that no single specialty society or other physician group can. When we bring physicians together, we’re able to speak in a unified voice, and the more members we have, the greater our credibility. We’re apt to find that there are more similarities between us than differences, and we benefit from listening to our colleagues’ stories and concerns.

 

When our past executive director, Roger Brown, retired six years ago, it was financially impossible to hire a full-time replacement for him, so the MMS Board signed an agreement to share Cynthia Melody’s administrative services with the Sonoma County Medical Association and the Mendocino-Lake County Medical Society. The MMS office, which had moved from Larkspur to Corte Madera under Roger’s tenure, became a virtual office, staffed by the shared employees in Santa Rosa. The financial savings enabled us to continue the Marin Medical Society’s important work despite decreased dues revenues. With the help of Steve Osborn and his talented staff, we were able to publish a new and improved version of this magazine, which recently won first place in a Northern California publications competition sponsored by the Society for Technical Communication.

 

The MMS Board is always looking for ways to better serve its members and the public; like other organizations, we periodically hold a strategic planning retreat. The next one is planned for early March and will be held in conjunction with the Sonoma County Medical Association’s board retreat. In preparation for this event, we recently sent out a survey to both member and nonmember physicians, as well as other stakeholders in the community, to solicit their opinions on the role and expectations of MMS. We will carefully examine the survey responses and do our best to steer MMS in the right direction for the coming years. Stay tuned for the results of our deliberations.

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Dr. deFischer, a family physician at Kaiser Petaluma, is president of MMS.

Email: irinadefischer@gmail.com