New Year, New Beginnings – NAVAPD Plans for 2023
On behalf of myself and the entire NAVAPD Board of Directors, I want to wish everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year. As we begin a new year, I think it is always a good idea to look back at what positive changes we have made, both personally and professionally, so that we can continue to carry that positive momentum into the new year to bring about a sea change that enriches, enhances, and empowers not only ourselves and our loved ones, but those we have chosen to serve.
As you may be aware, this past year has brought many changes to NAVAPD. The NAVAPD Board elected its first ever Dentist as President. We have made many organizational changes over the past year that will allow us to be more connected, representative, and responsive to you, our members.
Some of NAVAPD’s major accomplishments of this past year include:
NAVAPD held our first ever Virtual Membership Meeting that was well attended by our members. The members in attendance responded positively to this virtual format and they were able to have their concerns heard and addressed by the board directly. Read More>>
We made updates to our website and logo. We made our logo a more modern and fresh representation of the organization reflective of our current membership.
The Board has established 6 NAVAPD Regional Chapters, each with a regional point of contact. This will allow us to better serve our members. Read More>>
We surveyed the membership to see what concerns are more important to the field and created action plan items for the top concerns. Read More>>
We provided comments and recommendations to the VA Steering Committee on Physician and Dentist pay urging the Committee to enact our recommendations since most of NAVAPD’s recommendations from 2018 and 2020 were ignored or not acted upon. Read More>>
NAVAPD President, Dr. Abate, met with Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz to discuss staffing, pay and other issues that impact physicians and dentists. Read More>>
NAVAPD signed a Letter of Support with Friends of VA, recommending Congress support the passage of the VIPER Act to protect the future of research for prosthetic care of veterans. Read More>>
Building on our successes from the past year, NAVAPD has the
following plans for this coming year:
NAVAPD will continue to do outreach to the new Congress once the House and Senate VA committees have been finalized. We will continue to ask for and have face to face or virtual meetings with key stakeholders on those committees so that the concerns of our members can be addressed.
NAVAPD will continue to strengthen the regional chapter structure of the organization so that members in those regions may address their issues directly with an assigned board member. This will allow our membership to have direct access to the board, as well as have timely response to their inquiries.
We will continue to identify those issues facing our members in the field, and provide our opinions, recommendations, and solutions that will continue to preserve, protect, and strengthen the doctor-patient relationship.
We will continue to provide evidence, recommendations, and ideas for solutions to both the House and Senate VA committees on any potential bills, directives, regulations, processes, procedures, etc. that may impact VA physicians and dentists, and impact the care we provide our veteran patients.
NAVAPD will continue to push for changes in the HR Modernization effort so that new hiring actions take place efficiently and expeditiously. We will ask for an onboarding process that does not risk VA losing highly qualified physicians and dentists. We will also continue to push our Congressional leaders to support appropriate staffing levels of departments by physicians and dentists, especially given the expansion of benefits to servicemembers and veterans that is about to happen as a result of the passage of the PACT Act.
NAVAPD will also continue to support efforts to delay the deployment of the new Cerner Electronic Health Record until such time that all problems and bugs in the product are worked out so that the transition from CPRS is seamless and does not put the health and lives of veterans at risk.
The Board of Directors is planning for our next virtual membership meeting. A letter to the field will be sent out as the meeting details are finalized.
If there are any other issues that you feel NAVAPD needs to add to our action items, please feel free to use the Contact Us feature on the website, or reach out directly to one of our Board Members.
“To care for [those] who have borne the battle.”