Member Benefits Overview

SMCMA enthusiastically welcomes new members. The online membership application makes it easy for you to join. If you want to avoid a lump-sum dues payment and set up a payment plan, the Medical Association offers an Easy Pay Plan.

The goal of the San Mateo County Medical Association is to maintain and improve the quality of medicine; to provide services to the community; and to provide services to member physicians. Maintaining and improving the quality of medicine was one of the original responsibilities of the San Mateo County Medical Association when it was founded in 1905. Maintaining the quality of medicine is as important today as it was a hundred years ago.

Your participation in the San Mateo County Medical Association strengthens medicine by enabling organized medicine to speak with a unified voice and from a position of influence and leadership. Unity remains a powerful force for the medical community.

Additionally, many programs and activities of the Medical Association are important to your practice. Benefits available to members take many shapes. A few of the benefits of membership include the following.

The Power of Membership

Your Practice Is Our Business
As a physician, you face a rapidly evolving health care system in this county, this state, and this nation. The challenges have never been greater, and the principles that make your profession so gratifying are under attack. Regulation, legislation, technology, insurance, and economic issues all have an impact, for good or ill, on the practice of medicine.

The San Mateo County Medical Association understands your concerns and defends your position. By taking advantage of the many member benefits and services the Association offers, you will be enriched personally and professionally.

With major legislative and economic issues ever on the horizon, making your voice heard and your actions felt is critical for the future of medicine. Strong in numbers, solid in unity, and empowered in membership, we can get things done!

Together with the California Medical Association (CMA), SMCMA shares the primary goals of organized medicine for the state of California: To educate and serve physicians and promote quality health care for the people of the state.

The Power of Advocacy

Political
The Association's political action committees address crucial issues affecting San Mateo County physicians. As a member, you can helpshape legislation by participating in the SMCMA Legislative Committee and PAC. Committee members communicate regularly with county and state legislators to discuss pending legislation and to represent the prevailing position of organized medicine on such issues as MICRA (Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975), E & M Documentation Guidelines, and gag clauses.Your support enables the Association to fight for you where and when it really matters . . . because your practice is our business.

Legal
If a dispute arises when a member physician is subpoenaed as an expert witness or is called on to provide testimony, the Medical/Legal Liaison Committee can advise and intervene on the member's behalf regarding issues of testimony and compensation.

Peer Review
The Association's highly successful Peer Review Program advises on sensitive medical issues and conflicts.

• The Professional Relations Committee works to improve doctor/patient relations by investigating patient complaints about physician practices and standards of care.
• The Fee and Insurance Mediation Committee considers third-party payer issues and assists physicians and patients with billing problems, often by expediting amicable solutions.
• The Medical Review and Advisory Committee acts as a liaison with the NORCAL Mutual Insurance Company to advise on issues of professional liability.
• The NORCAP, which the Association administers, conducts peer reviews when insured physicians seek to appeal insurer decisions on imposition of a surcharge or cancellation of liability insurance.

 
The Power of Community

Public Health
The Medical Association is an advocate for local and statewide public health concerns, including health care for the indigent, violence issues, and a smoke-free California. Here in San Mateo County, SMCMA is working with county health services to implement Healthy San Mateo 2000.

Regional
SMCMA membership helps you reach out and be a presence in the community where you practice or live through the Association's Speakers Bureau, Mini-Internship Program, and many task force activities.

Professional
SMCMA membership helps you develop new insights about your profession through participation in Association committees, which study such medical issues as managed care, bioethics, the environment, long-term care, physician well-being, and practice management.

As an active member of SMCMA, you will build a network of friends, colleagues, and business associates throughout the medical community of the county and the state, which will extend well beyond your specialty, medical group, or hospital staff.