Upcoming conference celebrates 50th anniversary of RPA
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Key takeaways:
- The keynote speaker is General Gustave F. Perna, who oversaw Operation Warp Speed during the Trump administration.
- Value-based care and data interpretation will be prominent topics at the meeting.
Editor’s note: Healio interviewed Brendan T. Bowman, MD, program chair of the Renal Physicians Association Annual Meeting, taking place April 11-14 in Baltimore.
The conference celebrates the 50th anniversary of the RPA. For more information, visit www.renalmd.org.
Healio: The Louis Diamond Lecture will be given by General Gustave F. Perna, who headed Operation Warp Speed for the Trump administration. What lessons can he share with nephrologists?
Brendan T. Bowman, MD: What we want to accomplish in this opening session
is to share with new members – through the past president’s panel – the critical role that the RPA has played in supporting nephrologists over the years. Our mission has been to take care of nephrologists so they can focus on taking care of patients.
We are also looking at our mission statement to see how RPA can help nephrology leaders move forward with their new strategic goals. And who better than a keynote speaker like General Perna to help lead that task? He started with nothing and built one of the most complicated, logistical operations in history in bringing a vaccine for COVID-19 to the entire U.S. population. While an extreme example, the theme of leading in uncertainty has many lessons for nephrologists today.
Healio: Value-based care remains important for nephrology practices. How are you addressing that topic at the RPA meeting?
Brendan T. Bowman, MD: We plan to jump right into value-based care (VBC) with a session kicked off by Elizabeth Fowler, PhD, JD, who is the deputy director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). She will talk not only about current demonstrations, but what CMMI is working on for new models moving forward. We will also hear about how her organization is tackling issues like health equity.
Part of the RPA program will also be a panel of speakers who are participating in current value-based care models and will share what they have experienced: What were the lessons they learned, and how we can not only help big practices, but two- to three- member practices understand value-based care.
In conjunction with those sessions, we also have a planned health care payers panel that will include Rajesh Davda, MD, MBA, national medical director of network performance evaluation and improvement at Cigna Healthcare, and Matthew Smith, MD, MMM, director of system integration at University Orthopedics Inc.
Healio: Are there opportunities to learn more about practice management?
Brendan T. Bowman, MD: We have a comprehensive session on managing data. We want to offer ideas on how to take different data streams – outside data and a practice’s clinical data, for example – and show how these can be integrated in a nephrology practice. We also have core topics like managing your practice’s culture and burnout for all the different members of a practice.
Healio: What does the agenda offer for fellows?
Brendan T. Bowman, MD: We have a session for early career physicians or fellows looking for input about traditional and non-traditional career paths in nephrology. But the panel of nephrologists will also cover how to navigate mid-career changes. We will have a presentation from an academic nephrologist, private practice partner and a physician executive in value-based care and pharma.
There are people in our specialty who want to make a change within nephrology but do not know how to do it.
We also have sessions on the basics of nephrology practice – including VBC and fundamentals of patient safety. All the sessions are useful for fellows but particularly the rapid literature and guideline updates.
Healio: How is the RPA addressing “green” nephrology this year?
Brendan T. Bowman, MD: It is an important topic, and we will include a session that covers how the community was impacted by the wildfires in Maui and a session entitled, “Health equity in climate change,” presented by Cheryl Holder, MD. She is president of the Florida State Medical Association and serves as co-chair of Florida Clinicians for Climate Action and will discuss how climate change particularly impacts communities in disparate and uneven ways. Historically vulnerable populations are most at risk, so the program will look at ways to identify and mitigate these inequities.
It offers another lens of health equity that we have not heard about before as nephrologists.
Healio: Aside from the valued legislative update, are there other sessions that will cover regulatory issues?
Brendan T. Bowman, MD: CMMI's implementation of value-based care models in kidney care is in its third year, so we will hear from Miriam Godwin, who is the lead on the End-Stage Kidney Disease Treatment Choices model, and Tom Duvall, who is director of the division of special populations and projects in the Seamless Care Models Group of CMMI. They will both be part of a town hall meeting for attendees on important issues regarding the CMMI payment models.
Healio: Any closing thoughts on this year’s program?
Brendan T. Bowman, MD: This year is extra special as it is not only our annual meeting, but an excuse for a great party. We are looking forward to celebrating our 50th anniversary with a gala and commemorative events throughout the weekend. It will be special.
For more information
Brendan T. Bowman, MD, can be reached at brendan.bowman@gmail.com.
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