Candidates for President-Elect Respond
APA stands poised at a crossroads of opportunity. The tragic events of September 11 elicited a spirited and determined response from our members. The crucial importance of psychiatry to the commonweal of our nation has at long last been acknowledged.
We must battle to:
| •. | Urgently improve access to quality care for children and adults. Despite the economic downturn, this effort should be unflagging. | ||||
| •. | Assure the passage of patient protection legislation to defeat egregious managed care practices, which have compromised quality care and stripped medicine of many of its resources. | ||||
| •. | Eliminate the “for-profit” carveout of psychiatric services. | ||||
| •. | Rebuild public psychiatry, which has been severely weakened by unwise fiscal policies. The safety net has been replaced by the correctional system. | ||||
| •. | Strengthen our business outreach. | ||||
| •. | Advance fresh and creative ideas in psychiatric education while defending our place in the overall medical school curriculum. | ||||
| •. | Demonstrate to residency directors the effectiveness of teaching advanced strategies in the psychotherapies. | ||||
| •. | Protect our patients from the proposed psychologists’ prescribing laws. | ||||
| •. | Maintain the primacy of psychiatric physicians in providing psychotherapy. | ||||
| •. | Preserve doctor-patient confidentiality. | ||||
| •. | Sustain the growing strength of our district branches with increased resources. | ||||
| •. | Support our alliances with patient advocacy groups. | ||||
To accomplish these goals, we have striven to make budget cuts and re-allocate APA’s resources. The reshaping of APA, contrary to my opponent’s claims, has been under way for the past three years. As your vice president I actively led in:
| •. | Reworking our direction and priorities, examining every sector of organizational life to determine where to cut back, cut out, enlarge, shift, and recast our infrastructure. | ||||
| •. | Making decisions based on the firm knowledge of our organizational priorities, strengths, and weaknesses. | ||||
I have a strong commitment to our profession. My deep background as educator, clinician, researcher, and administrator will serve you well. I am an experienced APA leader looking to our future with vigor and optimism. As your elected president, with grit and resolve I will fight relentlessly to keep psychiatry and the plight of our patients a major public issue.
