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BCMS
The BCMS Value Proposition
By Stephen C. Fitzer, BCMS CEO/Executive Director
Why did you choose to practice medicine? Most of you will how physicians working together can
probably say that it is because you want to practice the art and share knowledge and experience to
science of medicine, help people, reduce suffering, make a differ- their mutual benefit and improve
ence in people’s lives and yes, make a living at it. When you de- their craft.
cided to go to medical school, you had a vision of what it would
be like. Now that you are a physician, you have realized that be- The Bexar County Medical Society
sides being a noble, sacred calling, medicine is a business. In fact, (BCMS) and the Texas Medical Asso-
it is probably the most complex business there is because of all ciation (TMA) are not specialty soci-
the regulations, varied interests and opportunities. eties; they are geographical,
community based societies with different purposes from specialty
By now, you have realized that you can’t practice medicine societies. BCMS and TMA are, for practical purposes, the same
alone. You need someone to make appointments, keep charts, file organization. To leverage influence, sync objectives and ensure
insurance, collect money, prepare patients for treatment, ensure commonality of purpose, TMA and all county medical societies
you have enough supplies, and a thousand other tasks. You can in Texas act as a single organization at the state level while oper-
control all these things as a team leader, but you may have also ating uniquely at the county level. This allows counties to meet
learned that being part of a group practice lessens the burden on local community needs but defend the practice of medicine at
the individual physician. It only makes sense. the state level where legislation, medical licensing, policing of in-
surance and the like take place. It just makes sense that some
Now enter the larger realm. Who watches out for your inter- things are better handled at the state level, while some things are
ests in the legislature? Who creates CME opportunities for you? better handled at the county level.
Who keeps you informed about trends in medicine? Who cre-
ates opportunities to get involved in creating and administering TMA has the scale (50,000 members) to gain the ear of state
medical policy for all providers? Who takes care of community and national leadership on issues of great importance to the prac-
health issues? Who creates opportunities to interact socially with tice of medicine. Sometimes, to increase clout, specialty societies
your peers? Who gives you a voice in the community? Who can join TMA on issues common between them and TMA to further
give you access to people and methods for solving day-to-day influence state entities relative to medical affairs. The Texas leg-
problems in the practice of medicine? Organized medicine is islature listens to TMA (and therefore local county medical soci-
the vehicle for collaboration and pursuing the common interests eties by inclusion) on matters that impact patient care, physician
of physicians. practice and community health. No other physician organization
in Texas has as much clout as TMA in influencing a physician’s
Most physicians belong to a specialty society to keep them up practice of medicine.
on technical skills in their medical niche. In fact, some physi-
cians belong to multiple specialty societies to stay aware of de- We all remember the great battle fought for tort reform in
velopments. This makes total sense and is a demonstration of 2003. Because TMA rallied physicians of all specialties across
12 San Antonio Medicine • October 2015
