To: Kentucky Academy of Family Physician Members
From: Ron Waldridge, MD II, President
Date: January 7, 2012
Your Board of Directors has set goals and objectives for this coming year that we believe will move us closer to our vision of ‘family physicians for all Kentuckians.’ To work with us in Frankfort to achieve this vision, we have retained MML&K Government Solutions as our government relations firm.
To understand why we have taken this initiative you may want read the AAFP News Now story back in November about the Virginia Academy of Family Physicians’ success last year in their legislature. At this year’s AAFP State Legislative meeting, we were able to speak directly with our colleagues from Virginia. What we learned was reinforcement of what we knew- that it takes family physician members involvement with their legislators, but it also takes a lobbyist to assist us in facilitating that process. If you have not read their story, here is a link to it: http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/publications/news/news-now/chapter-of-the-month/20121130virginiachapter.html.
Your Advocacy Committee in the past has done an amazing job to get the message out to you and to encourage you to make connections with your legislator. Like you, your Advocacy members have busy practices and cannot always be there in Frankfort to work on your behalf. There was a lot of legislative activity impacting family medicine, this past session in Frankfort, and we expect with the continued phasing in of the Affordable Care Act that this trend will continue.
The Board has realigned its budget in order to achieve hiring a lobbyist such that we can continue to offer you the same state dues as we have had in place since 2004. For instance, we hope moving our annual meeting from around July to November 14-17, 2013 at the Campbell House in Lexington, will encourage more attendance and make it profitable.
The KAFP Executive Committee interviewed several lobbying firms. After careful consideration, the Committee decided to retain the services of the MML&K Government Solutions team.
MML&K Government Solutions has extensive experience working with associations and organizations in the healthcare arena. Through their work with these clients, the MML&K team has gained tremendous knowledge about the dynamics of healthcare policy in the Commonwealth, the complex issues Kentucky providers face, and how to best utilize the strength of association membership to affect policy outcomes in the state.
We are excited to move forward with such a bipartisan, professional government relations team. Working with the MML&K Government Solutions will strengthen the position of the KAFP and afford much greater opportunity for you our members to influence outcomes in Frankfort on matters that affect family physicians in Kentucky. If you would like to learn more about MML&K, please visit their website at www.mmlkgov.com.