FP Report -- April 1999
ASPN seeks home within Academy
America's oldest practice-based primary care research network is seeking a new home within the AAFP.
The Denver-based Am-bulatory Sentinel Practice Network -- with about 700 family physicians and 50 other health professionals as members -- faces financial problems. It lacks reserves to cover about $400,000 in debts.
"The ASPN board met March 3 and unanimously agreed on restructuring ASPN and moving it into the AAFP," said Jerry Royer, M.D., of Sacramento, Calif., ASPN's part-time, interim executive director.
Royer, a family physician, recently was senior vice president and chief medical officer of Mercy Healthcare Sacramento and vice president for clinical quality at Catholic Healthcare West, a 48-hospital system.
The Academy has helped fund ASPN for seven years.
"The Academy has encouraged ASPN's growth over the years, and the AAFP Board will consider what might be the best way to preserve the central element of ASPN's mission -- practice-based research by family physicians," said AAFP EVP Robert Graham, M.D.
The ASPN board formed two subcommittees in January, one to monitor finances and one to search for an interim director, address repayment of the debts and guide ASPN's restructuring. Former ASPN Executive Director Paul Nutting, M.D., has resigned but is working on existing ASPN projects on contract as a senior research associate.
John Hickner, M.D., chair of the ASPN board of directors and family practice professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, wrote ASPN members March 5.
"Stay with us during this time of reorganization," asked Hickner in the letter. "The budget issues will not affect completion of the current (research) projects. Please help us by participating fully in the current studies."
ASPN's current projects address topics such as treatment and referral of depressed patients and FPs' interventions with problem drinkers. Besides conducting its own studies, ASPN coordinates 20 local and regional family practice research networks with about 3,000 members.
Why keep ASPN? "Running a practice, especially in rural U.S.A., can consume all your life if you let it," said Michelle Petrofes, M.D., of Reedsport, Ore., an FP in ASPN. "ASPN is one part of making the work fit the ideal of learning from what we are doing, not continuing to do it without any thought as to why and whether we are getting better at it."
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department. Copyright © 1999 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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