Matt Reiter, AAPM Lobbyist Consultant—Expecting the Unexpected in this Election Year
Mr. Reiter will prognosticate about the presidential election year dynamics and how they may impact health policy, providing an overview of the current federal legislative environment for healthcare issues. He will look at the Administration’s healthcare proposals and then look at policy changes that may impact the clinical work of medical physicists. In addition, the session will address any draft bills introduced and/or anticipated that would be important to AAPM’s advocacy priorities. Mr. Reiter will offer some predictions for the year ahead and talk about how AAPM’s advocacy strategies might adjust in response to anticipated changes.
Jennifer Elee, CRCPD Representative— Current State Regulatory Issues, CRCPD/AAPM Collaborations and Initiatives, and Medical Event Reporting Update
This presentation will examine trending issues that state regulators are concerned about that may impact medical physicists. The presenter will provide an update on some Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors (CRCPD) collaborations with AAPM, and CRCPD initiatives that are relevant to the medical physicist community. In addition, the presentation will provide an update on the CRCPD’s continuing efforts to create a national database of radiation medical events, providing a single point for all states to input events into a single database. The session will summarize recent data, offer analysis of radiation medical event data collected, and discuss the lessons learned so far.
Richard Martin—AAPM Advocacy Activities: Advancing the Practice of Medical Physicists
Mr. Martin will look at AAPM’s government relations portfolio, offering insight into AAPM’s advocacy priorities and goals, and impact on the medical physicist community. This presentation will examine current and trending issues that are important to AAPM’s advocacy in Congress and at federal and state agencies, including the practice of medical physicists, radiation safety, source security, patient access to radioactive sources, and immigration issues impacting the scientific community. In addition, Mr. Martin will discuss the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) activities, including those related to the NRC’s re-evaluation of Training and Experience requirements for Authorized Users (AUs). Mr. Martin will summarize AAPM’s advocacy achievements and address the issues and projects to be addressed during 2020.
Kalpana M. Kanal, ABR Trustee – ABR MOC and OLA Updates
The American Board of Radiology (ABR) and many other ABMS boards are replacing the 10 year MOC exam with an on-going process in which questions are provided on-line at the rate of 2 per week. This has many advantages for the diplomates. It was initiated for diagnostic radiologists in 2019 and for medical physics, radiation oncologists and interventional radiologists at the beginning of this year (2020), The diagnostic radiologists have been very enthusiastic. In this session we will review the status of ABR-OLA for medical physicists. We will also include encouragement for those who might have been slow to take up ABR-OLA
Learning objectives:
1. To understand the political environment impacting medical physicists and the medical use of radiation, research funding, and health policy.
2. To gain insight into AAPM’s federal legislative advocacy priorities and strategies.
3. To learn about trending state regulatory issues that may impact the practice of medical physicist.
4. To understand the CRCPD/AAPM Collaborative activities.
5. To understand the CRCPD’s event reporting activities and lessons learned from current CRCPD data.
6. To learn about current legislative and regulatory issues impacting the practice of medical physicists.
7. To understand AAPM’s government relations portfolio and its advocacy priorities and strategy.
8. To review the salient points of ABR-OLA.
9. To review the major advantages of ABR-OLA.