Message from

Kurion Thott, MD

Chair, Communications & Education

The year 2020 will go down in history as one of the major sentinel events of our current time. As many of you likely feel, similar to me, that this has been the longest year so far. We started this year with the aspirational hopes of a new decade upon us only to quickly have to pivot to our basic clinical skills in caring for members of our community as the COVID-19 crisis came upon us. Then our society as a whole had to face the grim reality of racial biases and forced some of us to ask ourselves what we in healthcare have known for years, that there is disparity in our society and now what can I as a clinician do about it to have a positive impact?

I mention the above as part of our Communication and Education Committee update as an important reminder that steady flow of communication is essential for us at all times but never more so during difficult ones. The Mary Washington Health Alliance has worked alongside the MWHC leadership in making sure our members were able to access and get timely information regarding COVID-19 and to regularly update our members on how they could navigate this crisis at the practice level. We were able to get insights both high level and granular regarding telehealth and billing so that practices could mitigate the financial implications of a national shut down.

Every one of us has been impacted in some way by these recent events, both professionally and personally. But we have also risen to the challenge as a community of clinicians to support, guide and be leaders in our own way. As we are still not past the COVID-19 pandemic we as a committee are committed to bringing our membership up to date information, and as we have learned, situations like these are fluid and change day to day.

A few months ago, we did our first ever virtual annual meeting and heard from our members how much they appreciated how we were communicating with them. We are continuously exploring communication methods to enhance and not distract our members. Currently newsletters like this, Dr. Lewis’ monthly update, and our annual report is the mainstay of communication and education to our Alliance. However, there are other events like PCP Forums and Business Manager Forums that also help to get more detailed and specialty specific information disseminated. We also use Tiger Connect to get more urgent information to our Alliance when needed and we encourage everyone to sign up and use this technology to stay connected. Our committee and others are looking for those members who are looking to become involved and share their input. If you are interested in serving on this or other committees reach out to Travis Turner or Dr. Rick Lewis for more details.

I’ll end this with some final thoughts, we as a network and medical community are stronger when we are able to work alongside together toward our goal of quality patient care regardless of pandemic or societal unrest. As physicians we are all leaders in our own way in this community and times like these creates leaders in all of us.