Dear Colleagues-
I hope this correspondence finds everyone doing well! I would like to thank all who attended our 2022 OGS annual meeting and CME event in Columbus on September 16th. From all the positive feedback we have received from our attendees, I am happy to report that it was an overwhelming success! The speakers were all outstanding and were well received by our audience. I would like to extend a special thanks to Dr. Dany Raad and Mary Whitacre for planning this excellent event. We have realized that our original planned date for our 2023 meeting had presented a conflict with Rosh Hashanah, so we have made a change for the date of our 2023 Annual meeting. It will now be held on September 9th 2023 at the Renaissance Hotel Westerville-Polaris in Columbus. Please mark your calendars to reflect this change in date.
Our OGS membership and society finances remain strong, and we continue to see an influx of new members to our society from all across the state of Ohio. A robust membership remains a key to our lobbying and legislative efforts. These are much more impactful when we tell our legislators or insurers that we represent the interests of hundreds of gastroenterologists throughout the state. The link to renew your membership is ohiogisociety.org/membership. $100 remains a very reasonable membership cost which not only gains members free access to our annual meeting and CME event, but it also provides members access to state level advocacy. Membership remains free for our medical residents and gastroenterology fellows. If you are a provider at an academic institution, please continue to advocate for your trainees to join OGS.
I would strongly encourage our OGS members to consider voting on November 8th in some hotly contested Ohio Supreme Court races. OGS is recommending support of several Ohio Supreme Court justices. The three candidates being supported are incumbent Pat Dewine (R), Sharon Kennedy (R) for Chief Justice, and incumbent Pat Fischer (R). Since organized medicine passed significant tort reform legislation the medical liability environment in Ohio has remained stable. Premiums rates have decreased from prior historic highs, claims are down and the number of companies offering insurance has increased. The make-up of the Supreme Court is critical to ensuring that the reforms that medicine has worked so hard to pass continue to be upheld as constitutional in the future. Without their re-elections, all the hard work medicine has expended to pass common sense liability reform could be in jeopardy. Please pass the word around to staff and colleagues to support these candidates.
If there are any regulatory, insurance related, or state legislative issues adversely affecting your patients or your practices please bring these to our attention. OGS was founded in part to have a “seat at the table” and a means to engage in state health policy issues that affect our members and their respective practices and patients. We are here to advocate on behalf of our members. Please reach out with these issues at ohiogisociety.org/contact.
Enjoy the beautiful Fall weather and look forward to seeing you all next September!
Respectfully,
Terry O’Toole, D.O
President
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