The Orange County Medical Association Board of Directors held its annual retreat during the first weekend in October. The purpose of the retreat was to provide an educational and interactive forum to assist the leadership in developing strategies to meet the current and future needs of our members.

Maintaining the status quo is never a good option for any organization. Although the OCMA has a very strong organizational image and presence in our county, if we do not nurture that image, it will fade.

Therefore, we devised strategies that would refocus us on our goals, revitalize our leadership and our members’ participation, and refresh the organization to ensure a vibrant and responsive medical association that meets the members’ and community’s needs.

In short, the three Rs of the OCMA are REFOCUS, REVITALIZE and REFRESH.

To help our leadership accomplish this mission, we developed a program that featured leaders from both the California Medical Association and the American Medical Association. This joining of county, state and national organized medicine was not about dealing with the diseases of our patients, which we already do quite well, but rather about dealing with the signs and symptoms of our diseased healthcare system.

Perhaps the most glaring symptom of weakness in our healthcare system is the fragmentation and disengagement of physicians from their representative organizations. As physicians, we wear many hats. We take care of patients in our offices as well as in the hospital; we are members of various specialty organizations in medicine and surgery; and we are also part of the advocacy of our county, state and national medical associations. Some of us give our allegiance to all of the above groups and some to few or none.

However, the public measures physicians not only by the care they provide, but by the organizations that speak on physicians’ behalf. This is particularly evident in our state Legislature in Sacramento and in our Congress in Washington, where the bills and laws under which we practice are created and determine our future.

Our adversaries, the trial lawyers, the insurance companies and health plans, are well aware of the vulnerability demonstrated by our individuality and have used the “divide and conquer” strategy very effectively to achieve greater control of some aspects of our profession.

How can we strengthen the power and control we need to reshape the future of healthcare in our country? When we ask our colleagues to become more supportive by joining associations of organized medicine, we usually hear the response, “What will these organizations do for me?”

The answer to that question and the mission of the American Medical Association are the same. The AMA helps doctors help patients by uniting physicians nationwide to work on the most important professional and public health issues. The public knows this. The lobbyists know this. The legislators know this. Now, all doctors must know this. By banding together, we can take the lead in shaping the future of medicine.