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January 7, 2008

"You can't live a perfect day without doing something for
someone who will never be able to repay you."
John Wooden (1910-- )
Basketball Coach

Good Afternoon,

To start the New Year, on Wednesday, I met with a faculty member from the University of Florida College of Medicine to discuss issues of concern. On Friday, I addressed my local Kiwanis Club on Access to Health Care. On Saturday, I had the opportunity to tour several important historical sites in Jacksonville. Joining me on this tour were John Montgomery, M.D., President of the Duval County Medical Society, Mr. George Lewis, who works with Dr. Montgomery at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, Mr. Jay Millson, Executive Vice President of the Duval County Medical Society, and Mr. Russ Jackson, FMA Director of Policy Management and Special Assistant to the President.

Led by efforts of the FMA, the building was named in 1999 after Florida's longest serving State Health Officer, Wilson T. Sowder, M.D., M.P.H., and selected to house the Florida Museum of Medicine and Public Heath. The FMA continues to work closely with the Florida Department of Health to establish this Museum. Its educational purpose will be to chronicle the history of medicine and public health in Florida and to serve as an inspiration to children, their families, and the people of Florida about the importance of quality health care and the related roles of the private and public sectors in insuring that Florida remains a healthy place to live and work.

We next visited the Florida Department of Health's State Laboratory located near the Museum building. Ming Chan, Ph.D., Director of the Jacksonville Laboratory, showed us the vast array of equipment, personnel, and services the laboratory provides in analyzing over one million samples each year from hospitals, doctors' offices, county health departments, and others to protect the public's health from sources of communicable diseases including chemicals that could be used for weapons of mass destruction. The anthrax threat of 2001 was isolated and identified in this laboratory. Dr. Chan and his many colleagues in Jacksonville and the other state laboratory facilities in Florida are critically important to the protection and improvement of the public's health for all Floridians.

Drs. Montgomery and Altenburger at the Florida Deptment of Health Labratory in Jacksonville.

The Borland Library also contains a complete set of The Journal of the Florida Medical Association from their beginning in 1914. The fact that these and many other historical treasures are present in the library is due to the efforts of Ms. Carolyn Hall. Ms. Hall, who was the Director of the State Board of Health Library, was able to have these historical publications transferred to the Borland Library after the State Board of Health was abolished in 1969 and Ms. Hall became the Director of the Borland Library. She is now retired but continues to serve as a key member of our FMA Museum Committee.

We next visited the grave site of the FMA's Founding President (in 1874), Abel S. Baldwin, M.D., at the Evergreen Cemetery just north of downtown Jacksonville. Dr. Baldwin is also credited as being the physician chiefly responsible for the founding of the Duval County Medical Society in 1853. We located the site of the founding of the Duval County Medical Society at the corner of Market and Bay Streets where its first meeting was held in the office of William L'Engle, M.D.

Grave site of Abel S. Baldwin, M.D., FMA's Founding President

We then went to the site of Dr. Baldwin's home and office at the corner of Laura and Adams Streets where the FMA was founded in 1874. The Elks Club Building now stands at this corner. We saw the plaque on the side of the Elks Club Building in honor of Dr. Baldwin and the founding of the FMA, which the FMA Board of Governors placed there in a ceremony in 1972.

FMA Plaque at Elks Building

James Hall, M.D. Memorial Monument in Jacksonville

Mr. Jackson and I then journeyed to the south of Jacksonville to the Mandarin area, where we visited the memorial monument to James Hall, M.D. This monument records what historians have written about Dr. Hall the first American physician to sustain a medical practice in Spanish Florida dating to his arrival in Jacksonville in 1798, when the city was known as Cowford. Dr. Hall was born in Keene, New Hampshire in 1760 and joined the American Revolutionary Army at the age of 17. He fought at the battles of Saratoga, Monmouth, and Yorktown.

After the war, he became a physician, moved to Florida and married a widow by the name of Eleanor Plummer Pritchard acquiring through her some 16,000 acres in Mandarin. Dr. Hall belonged to a group called the Patriots, who advocated the separation of Florida from Spain to become part of the United States, which finally occurred as the result of a treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819.

Dr. Hall, who was a true hero of the American Revolutionary War, died in 1837. Dr. Hall's burial site is now, unfortunately, unmarked although we are fairly certain as to its location. Within a year of his death, he was succeeded in Jacksonville by a young physician, Dr. Abel Baldwin, who would organize physicians first in Duval County and then across this entire state into the Florida Medical Association.

As the FMA continues to work on the establishment of the Florida Museum of Medicine and Public Health, we look forward to gathering historical information from county medical societies, specialty societies, individual physicians and their families, medical schools, hospitals, and others who have contributed so significantly to the development of our profession of medicine and public health in this great state of Florida.

"From July 1, 2006 through June 30, 2007, the value of goods and services donated (in medical services) to the citizens of Florida through the Volunteer Health Services Program totaled $147.5 million. Since the inception of the Volunteer Health Services Program in 1992, the Department of Health (DOH) has documented more than $1.1 billion in donated goods and services in the two volunteer programs the department administers. The majority of these contributions were directly related to medical and dental care provided to DOH clients."

Executive Summary, Annual Report (2006-2007)
Volunteer Health Services Program
Florida Department of Health

The majority of these donations were provided through each County Medical Society's "We Care" program. The complete report with a breakdown for each County may be viewed here. Although we have no estimate for other uncompensated and under compensated care provided by physicians in either inpatient or outpatient settings, the number must be substantial.

Your ability to review your Medicare Participation Options has been extended to Feb. 15. For additional information from the AMA's website, click here.

To review a report from the Congressional Budget Office on the future fiscal impact of the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs on the budget and economy of our country, click here.