This Sunday, May 1, the doctors of Puerto Rico elect a new board of directors.
Dr. Roberto Pérez Nieves, surgeon and candidate for the presidency of the College of Surgeons and Dr. Carlos Díaz, Cardiologist and also candidate for the presidency of the College of Surgeons. Photo: Courtesy of specialists to the Journal of Medicine and Public Health.
The College of Surgeons of Puerto Rico celebrates new elections this Sunday, May 1, with two platforms that emerged from the same structure that has directed it in recent years, led by Dr. Víctor Ramos, a pediatrician.
This time the group founded in 1994 under Law 77, which seeks to improve practices in Puerto Rican medicine, faces two medical specialists. On the one hand, Dr. Roberto Pérez Nieves, a prestigious surgeon, who began his practice on the battlefield during the war after the US invasion of Iraq.
Dr. Pérez Nieves is a native of Arecibo and studied at the Ponce School of Medicine. He worked at Brooke Army Medical Center, in the Burn Unit. He did his specialty in plastic surgery in Texas and returned to Puerto Rico in 2005.
Pérez Nieves’ colleagues describe him as an honest, demanding and disciplined doctor due to his military training. As a very young man he participated in the battlefield providing first aid and medical assistance to wounded soldiers on the battlefield with traumatic injuries related to war, bullets or shrapnel fire.
It was there that Pérez Nieves received various awards for his effective assistance in controlling bleeding and preventing more complex injuries among soldiers.
Meanwhile, the Dr. Carlos Diaz He studied at the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine and did his medical training at the Veterans Hospital, in internal medicine and cardiology.
Dr. Díaz is the current vice president of the College of Medical Surgeons, accompanying the current president and candidate for the vice presidency of the College of Surgeons of Puerto Rico, Dr. Víctor Ramos in the last elections. In fact, they were partners in the presidency and vice-presidency of the institution during the current mandate of the Board of Directors.
Dr. Díaz has been linked for years to various organizations and medical faculties such as the College of Physicians itself, the extinct Medical Examining Court, patient attorney, physician at Pavia Hospital and in partisan politics he tried to occupy some important positions becoming Municipal Legislator of the Popular Democratic Party in San Juan.
It is interesting that both candidates are specialists and have more coincidences than differences among their flags. However, there is one that predominates, Dr. Díaz proposes a forensic investigation to the coffers of the College. His current opponents and until recently allies in that same Board, describe the audit as a “fishing expedition” and a contradiction because it deals with decisions that were made with Diaz in the vice presidency.
But it is not the first time that during the intense and strong campaigns for the presidency of the Medical Association, these types of audits have been threatened without the results ever being known or ending in accusations of embezzlement.
This Magazine presents the most relevant proposals of both candidates beginning with the platform of Dr. Pérez Nieves:
one-. Tax decree: Make the tax exception decree available to all physicians.
two-. Medical malpractice: Achieve comprehensive malpractice reform such as caps, descriptive terms, specialized rooms, among others; get panel members appointed.
3-. Advanced age: Achieve greater assistance and accompaniment to doctors. There can be no indigent doctors after a life serving the health of our people.
4-. Medical plans: Control and fight against abuses of medical plans. We will seek to amend the law that has allowed them to operate as health providers.
5-. Help for members: Offer free financial counseling courses to doctors several times a year in various parts of the Island.
6-. Licensing Board: Assist and collaborate with the Licensing Board to improve the efficiency of the processes and facilitate the procedures that the doctors of that body have to carry out.
7-. General practitioners: Expand allowing general practitioners to evaluate patients to use the card for the disabled.
8-. Communication: Promote and seek mechanisms for better communication and exchange of ideas between all the medical faculties of the island’s hospitals.
9-. Federal Funds: We will continue to fight in Washington for all federal health programs to improve physician compensation.
10-. Credentials: Create a central credentialing system at CMCPR, both for medical plans and hospitals. Credentials of all required services.
Meanwhile, Dr. Díaz offers under his platform:
1. Develop a new international vision of the College. Expand and improve services and benefits for physicians. Defending membership as a priority.
2. Support and manage the 4% incentive for all doctors and any other incentive that benefits the medical class.
3. Establish strategies to combat the actions of medical plans/insurers against the medical class. Insurers continuously and unduly intervene in health decisions, hinder the approval of procedures, medications and therapies above medical criteria, which is unacceptable.
4. Work to convert the Medical Association through legislation into a credentialing and management center. Collaborate with the licensing board and other agencies to expedite procedures required by physicians.
5. Create a special committee of legal and financial advisers to evaluate the critical juncture “Of the School’s Medical Plan” which is at a crucial moment, in the midst of doubts, uncertainty and many questions.
6. Administer the School’s funds with transparency, efficiency, prudence and control. Perform forensic audit, review the contracts of the so-called lobbyists of the College. Eliminate the current salary granted to the President of the institution.
7. Develop comprehensive educational workshops on issues such as technology, computer programs, medical applications in cells and/or tablets, electronic records and use of social networks, methods to improve billing in medical offices and application of labor laws, training of medical office staff and in the College itself to improve service and communication.
8. Establish an educational and support program on the prevention of frivolous lawsuits, and offer legal assistance to members.
9-. Implement training in office administration. Aspects of financial planning, life insurance for disability, insurance fund, malpractice and properties with priority to doctors over 60 years of age.
10-. Promote and exchange communication with the districts and bodies to develop academic, social and professional activities in coordination with the central board.
eleven-. Turn the school into an agglutinating entity.
The voting of the College will be through six centers located in San Juan (Sheraton Convention Hotel), the Casa del Médico in Arecibo, Ponce and Mayagüez, Tiger Med in Caguas and the CDT in Canovanas.
The College of Surgeons of Puerto Rico It has around 10,400 registered doctors.