Legacy of Excellence Digital Flipbook

LEGACY OF EXCELLENCE

Dr. Johnson also focused his attention as President toward advocating for patient care as well as the health of the specialty on Capitol Hill. Writing in his first Bulletin column in October 2002 he said, “Your Academy has been increasingly proactive in dealing with the political process. We are actively engaged in monitoring legislation submitted to the state legislators. Additionally, we provide consultation and testimony to our government on issues germane to otolaryngologists’ services.” Continuing the theme of health policy and reform, he wrote in the February Bulletin , “Government regulates the insurance industry, establishes standards for business practices, and oversees the provision of healthcare. It is essential that physicians understand and take a leadership role in devising health policy in this country. Physicians have an opportunity to provide expert testimony to Congress and other decision makers. An accurately informed public may potentially be our most powerful ally in solving many of the health policy dilemmas in this country.” Looking ahead at the future of medicine and the specialty, Dr. Johnson reflected, “You must accommodate changes in medicine. Today we have immunotherapeutics for cancer… for chronic sinusitis with polyps… for asthma. It is an amazing world we live in, and I have every expectation that it will continue to change, and the velocity of change will become faster and faster. The otolaryngologist is really going to have to be on [their] toes. And, of course, this is where an organization like the American Academy of Otolaryngology is so important, because this is where we see each other, this is where we can discuss these things and you can hear about the new things. “What holds us together is the common training that is the residency in otolaryngology. As we go forward, there’s a great opportunity to splinter into a multitude of interest groups. I’ve always been an otolaryngologist in my heart, and I always saw great value [in having] a kind of a mother organization to which we could turn. So, I continue to see a great value in our Academy. “I have never done anything that I thought was more worthwhile than to care for people or to train the next generation or embark on clinical outcome studies that help us better understand what represents real value for our patients. It’s true that I no longer spend my days and nights in the operating room, but I’m still very much engaged in activities of patient care, training, and, of course, clinical research.”

I have never done anything that I thought was more

as a time when the Academy was faced with scope of-practice issues. Intensive efforts were launched by the Academy to ensure that otolaryngologists would continue to be recognized as the professional medical experts in caring for ear, nose, throat, and head and neck conditions. As a measure of quality patient care, the Academy tackled this issue at the federal and state levels, staving off the campaigns of the audiology community. There was also an increasing emphasis in healthcare on the need for documented, evidence-based medical care. This was an area that Dr. Johnson took great interest in for the future direction of the AAO-HNS/F. During his presidency, he coined the phrase “The Evidence Machine” for the Academy’s strategic initiative to set the course for evidence-based medicine and quality measures for enhanced quality patient care . “It was, I believe, the perspective of most of the leadership that otolaryngology was behind on developing the kind of evidence we needed to convince not just patients and other physicians, but third-party payers that the care we were recommending and rendering was in fact of value,” explained Dr. Johnson. “The idea that the patient should tell us about the value of their treatment was actually relatively new,” he continued. “I thought that otolaryngology really needed to take advantage of this because there were so many things that we did that were hard to measure. An example would be a septoplasty or septorhinoplasty. How do you know if that helped because complications are exceedingly rare? All you have is the patient to tell you if that was a good idea.” worthwhile than to care for people or to train the next generation or embark on clinical outcome studies that help us better understand what represents real value for our patients.”

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