Registration Now Open:
2023 Urology Resident Summit
and Job Fair
More than 70 urology residents are expected to gather at LUGPA’s Urology Resident Summit and Job Fair in Chicago, at the Fairmont Hotel, March 2-4, 2023.
This FREE program is dedicated to supporting PGY2, 3, 4 and 5 urology residents during their transition to full-time practice. The Urology Resident Summit and Job Fair covers the latest insights and crucial topics on various practice settings, vetting employment contracts and important questions to ask when interviewing. The program offers residents an opportunity to personally engage with key urology leaders from some of the largest independent urology practices in the country. Representatives from LUGPA urology practices will be available in the exhibit area to discuss current job opportunities at their practice.
CHECK OUT THE AGENDA
Registration is now open!
Socialize with other attendees!
Get social and network with other residents, LUGPA faculty and practices at our Saturday social event.
Where: SPiN (a ping pong social club)
- Time: 4:30 - 6:30 PM
- Apps/drinks will be served
- Raffle prizes!
To RSVP, simply check the box during registration!
PRACTITIONER SPOTLIGHT:
Dr. Morris Discusses the Economics of a Practice
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Dr. Morris |
In this video interview, David Morris, MD, FACS of Urology Associates, PC in Nashville, TN, talks about reimbursement, practice profitability, and thinking about economics in the long-term.
Dr. Morris is from East Tennessee and trained at Vanderbilt for his undergraduate and medical degree. His residency was completed at University of Michigan. He returned to Tennessee to join Urology Associates and has served as president of the group for the last 3 years. He is a general urologist with a special interest in oncology. He currently coordinates the Advanced Therapeutics Center and Clinical Research departments with multiple active phase 2 and 3 clinical trials.
Watch the full interview with Dr. Morris here.
OPINION
Value-Based Care with Innovative Tech Boosts Revenue and Efficiency: Specialists, Work Smarter – Not Harder
Specialist physicians, who generate significant proportions of net healthcare economic activity in the United States, dramatically trail behind their primary care colleagues in the utilization of Value-Based Care (VBC).
Adam Kern, MD
Industry stakeholders, principally in the primary care world, have begun to innovate in the creation of Value-Based Care (VBC) strategies. VBC fundamentally aims to reward organizations for providing high-value comprehensive care at lower costs, often achieved via Accountable Care Organization participation, advanced payment models, risk-based payor contracting, and a variety of other instruments, all of which are designed to allow clinicians to work smarter, rather than harder.
VBC does not imply a total shift away from fee-for-service (FFS), rather it is a holistic term encompassing some types of FFS not exclusively driven by clinical volume alone. The most effective VBC strategies leverage new care delivery structures alongside emergent technologies in digital health and analytics, properly utilize advanced practice midlevel providers, and are reimbursed under the rubric of VBC payment models.
Many of these strategies have been proven effective in primary care clinical settings. Why then is it that volume based FFS payment structures are most entrenched within the surgical specialties, and payors have yet to ascertain how to effectively engage specialists within VBC?
More Doesn’t Always Mean Better When It Comes to Healthcare.
While the healthcare sector represents an increasingly large proportion of the national GDP, the urological workforce faces the burgeoning storm clouds of decreasing reimbursement, projected shortfalls in the number of trained urologists, industry-leading reported physician burnout rates, and operational challenges stemming from shifts away from traditional venues of care. Furthermore, recent CMS rules have accelerated the need to foster increased healthcare quality while containing high cost.
All of these converging challenges lay bare the intrinsic limitation of a traditional FFS model which is solely reliant upon the finite volume of services rendered. Quite simply, a strategy of ramping up clinical volume ad infinitum to make up for these headwinds is doomed to fail in the long term.
Most importantly, historically high reimbursements for specialists and high specialist satisfaction until now have never incentivized their own participation. A young urologist entering practice in 2022 must recognize that the operational challenges we all continue to face will only increase, and adoption of new strategies will be the only way to prosper in coming decades while maintaining physician satisfaction.
This editorial was originally published in December 2021.
Dr. Adam Kern is one of the foremost fellowship-trained pediatric urologists in the Mid-Atlantic region. He serves as Director of Pediatric Urology at Chesapeake Urology and leads the practice’s pediatric urology program. Dr. Kern’s practice focus includes outpatient surgery, minimally-invasive and endoscopic surgery, perinatal urology and classic inpatient pediatric urology. Dr. Kern also has an interest in a comprehensive multidisciplinary approach to pediatric voiding.
Dr. Kern earned his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine, during which time he was awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. He went on to complete his general surgery internship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and his urological surgery residency training at the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He then completed an additional two-year fellowship in pediatric urological surgery at the Children’s Medical Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
Dr. Kern is a member of the American Urological Association, the Society of Pediatric Urology, the Large Urology Group Practice Association, and is an elected member of the Arnold P. Gold Humanism in Medicine Honor Society.
Urologist most stressful job in US
Urologists have the most stressful job in the United States, according to recently released data from The Occupational Information Network (O*NET), part of the Department of Labor, which released rankings for 873 jobs in the United States.
LUGPA, the national voice representing independent urology in the United States, is successfully working to address the variety of stressors that urologists face across the country. Read more.
Latest "Ask a Genetic Counselor" Forum
Available On Demand NOW
The latest Ask a Genetic Counselor Forum brought to you by LUGPA and Myriad is now available on demand. The session titled, "Full workup of prostate cancer patients and the importance of industry partnership to get the genetic answers you need" was held Oct. 18.
Dr. Neal Shore joined Rob Finch, Certified Genetic Counselor in this episode. The webinar included:
- Full work-up at initial diagnosis: Defining the Standard of Care
- Case Review: What is the utility for tissue-based biomarkers, germline testing, and somatic testing?
- Value of industry partnership in providing genetic answers and support for physicians and patients
- Extended Q&A session
To watch all the previous webinars in this series, visit the on demand archive here.
Advocacy Update
As the leading voice of independent urology group practices in the US, LUGPA educates policymakers on the benefits of integrated urologic care. LUGPA's Health Policy and Political Affairs committees drive grassroots efforts by developing thoughtful analysis and engaging public officials through comment letters on major legislative and regulatory proposals.
Here's some of the latest headlines from our advocacy news center:
Click here to read more news from LUGPA.
See Who is Hiring in LUGPA's Career Center
LUGPA's Career Center website is a place where urology residents can post their resumes, apply for jobs and get job alerts.
The site also features:
Career Coaching - Coming from a variety of professional backgrounds, LUGPA's Career Center offers certified coaches that have the experience, training, and expertise needed to help you achieve your career goals.
Resume Writing - LUGPA's Career Center offers experts who are ready to critique your existing resume or help you craft a document that gets you noticed.
Reference Checking - Get your references checked, confidentially and professionally so you can be confident your past employers are helping, not hurting, your candidacy.
Visit the Career Center now: careers.lugpa.org.
Looking for Past Issues of this Newsletter?
LUGPA launched this quarterly resident newsletter, Inroads, in 2020.
Now you can go back and look at all the great content in one place – including previous Practitioner Spotlight video interviews with Kari Bailey, MD, Robert Jansen, MD, Benjamin Lowentritt, MD and others.
Visit the newsletter archive here.
Enjoying this newsletter? Forward it to other urology residents to let them know about all LUGPA has to offer.
If you are not the direct recipient of this e-mail, sign up for future issues of LUGPA's Resident Newsletter here.
