We Protect Medicine by Empowering Good Doctors

Since its founding in 1821, the Nashville Academy of Medicine has been the voice of physicians in the Nashville community. Maintaining the integrity of the medical profession and ensuring that physicians can continue to provide patients with excellent care has been our strength for generations. We are honored to represent more than 2,300 members in the Nashville area. The Nashville Academy supports physician health, practice health, and community health. We support doctors with education, peer-to-peer networking, leadership training, business resources and other programs that help them grow personally and professionally.

Why You Should be Part of Organized Medicine ... Or What We've Done for You Lately?

The Nashville Academy supports you through:

  1. Member Services - The Nashville Academy provides services to support you and your practice, including temporary and permanent personnel services; assistance on practice management issues; business services, and personal development events.
  2. Promoting Positive Images of Medicine - The Nashville Academy generates positive media coverage for the medical profession, working to increase the community's understanding of medicine through programs like Project Access Nashville Specialty Care.
  3. Referral Service for Physicians and Patients - Every day The Nashville Academy receives calls from doctors and patients looking for a physician. This is a service provided to Academy members only. Our online directory is used throughout the health care community as the primary referral source.
  4. Liability Protection for Volunteer Physicians - The Governor recently signed a law that enables physicians who provide charity health care through organized programs, such as Project Access Nashville, to have liability protection, except in cases of gross negligence.

NAM members are also members with the TMA. TMA supports you through:

  1. Advocacy - The TMA advocacy efforts pay dividends daily to all physicians. Unfortunately the issues that require advocacy increase every year and we need the support of all physicians to maintain our high success rate.
  2. Protecting your interests in the Legislature - Every year, bills are introduced in the state legislature that would encroach on the practice of medicine. One of the most important services organized medicine provides is seldom seen: tracking and stopping harmful legislation. Of almost 3,500 - 4,000 bills filed during each year in the Tennessee General Assembly, TMA actively supports, opposes, or watches nearly 300 bills impacting medicine. Some specific examples are:
    • Stopped cuts in Medicare Reimbursement Rates Averaging $35,000/physician in 2007 - The average physician received $35,000 more in 2007 after organized medicine in our state, led by the TMA, prevented planned Medicare reimbursement cuts. In some cases, there were increases. Since most commercial payers calculate their rates from the Medicare schedule, the effect multiplies for every physician. If rates were cut as planned, your group could have lost millions in revenue.
    • Medical Liability Reform - TMA, with the support of local medical societies like the Nashville Academy, is leading the charge to reform our medical liability system. We must continue the fight until we achieve the proper legislation. To win, TMA needs have the support of individual physicians and their groups. These large scale advocacy efforts require the attention and efforts of the entire profession.
    • Single form credentialing - This  became law in 2005. We listened to members, saw the duplicity and waste in the old system and changed it. Now all doctors can use a single standard form to credential and re-credential physicians with the various insurance plans. Calculate the financial saving in staff time alone. Organized medicine in Tennessee also formed the Tennessee Physician Quality Verification Organization (TPQVO), cutting down on paperwork for you.
    • Insurance reforms - Every medical practice is affected by the bureaucracy of insurance companies. Through organized medicine efforts, Cigna changed its practices resulting in as much as $750,000 in ‘found money' for some larger groups. Although physicians were owed the money, chances were good that most never would have received it without these efforts. The long-term impact on the way insurance companies do business will mean greater balance and fairness to doctors.

Ready to join? Click here or contact Nikki Ringenberg at 615-712-6236 or nringenberg@nashvillemedicine.org for more information.

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