How You Can Make the Difference

The MLR Campaign is in high gear, but it won't go anywhere without your support. You are the voice, the legs, and the arms of the MLR Campaign.

This page offers resources to help you make a difference in the fight for medical liability reform.

Ideas
Grassroots Network Signup
Tell Us Your Story

Ideas    

On Capitol Hill

Make an impact directly on the decision-makers at several different levels:

1.       Donate to the MLR Campaign. Money talks and your personal check will help turn up the volume on the MLR message during the 2006 General Assembly session. Click here to donate.

2.       Join the TMA Grassroots Network. Cultivate a one-on-one relationship with your elected representatives, contacting them on MLR and other important issues. Click here to sign up.

3.    Attend Physician Tuesdays on the Hill. Don your white coat and head for Nashville – this year, it’s every Tuesday for the duration of the session. Click here for a look at the regional schedules and a sign-up form.

4.       Make personal legislative contacts to promote MLR. Schedule a visit with your lawmakers, pick up the phone, write letters and send e-mails. Use our Talking Points  to help you explain the need for MLR in Tennessee . Use our online contact center.

5.       Get involved with your elected officials. Call up your state representatives and offer to help with their campaigns, meetings, fundraisers, or better yet, become their “go-to” expert on MLR or other health-related issues.

6.       Join IMPACT. Don’t forget to support medicine-friendly candidates in the upcoming elections. Click here for more information about Independent Medicine’s Political Action Committee – Tennessee .

In the Office

1.      How is medical liability affecting you, your practice and your patients? Take time to outline how medical liability issues are affecting your practice from all angles. Develop your story and prepare yourself and your staff to talk about your concern in a personal fashion.

2.   Talk to colleagues. You don’t have to browbeat your fellow doctors, just ask them where they stand on the issue. Encourage them to become actively involved in the issue. Explain what you are doing and challenge them to do likewise. 

3.      Talk to patients. Take every opportunity to enlighten your patients about MLR and how it affects them and your relationship with them now and in the future. Explain how they too can help. Provide take home information and ask them to help in their own way. Use talking point cards, waiting room pamphlets, exam room posters, bill stuffers . . . any kind of literature that may open the conversation.

4.      Tell Your Story. After you have organized your thoughts and perfected your stories, use them! Write letters to local papers, seek out speaking opportunities with professional groups and civic organizations, communicate with your legislators. Don't let your story sit silent.

5.   Make MLR highly visible. Display MLR Campaign promotional items around your office, in your exam room, at the check-in window, or on your lapel. Get your office staffers to do the same. Click here to order promotional items.

In Your Community

1.       Educate family and friends. Talk to those closest to you about liability concerns and the need for medical liability reform in Tennessee . Encourage them to get active in the campaign. Explain your story and what your are doing. Provide them with information.

2.       Book a speaker or let TMA prepare you to speak on MLR. Contact TMA  to schedule a special MLR presentation at your local medical society, your medical staff meeting, Rotary Club or other community meeting.

3.       Be visible with your support. Order special MLR promotional items for your office like brochures, posters, flyers, bill stuffers, bumper stickers, buttons and patients action cards. Click here.

4.       Write MLR letters. Send personal letters to lawmakers, civic leaders, patients and your local newspapers. Click here for samples to help get you started.

5.       Offer your expertise. Contact local media and offer to tell your personal MLR story. When the MLR issue heats up at the State Capitol, reporters in your community will be looking for ways to localize the story. 

Grassroots Network Signup

Use your personal relationships with elected officials to promote support of MLR. Stay informed of critical issues, committee hearings or floor votes during the 2006 legislative session and connect you with your legislators by signing up to receive TMA Advocacy Alerts. You can bet that those same legislators are hearing from the local trial lawyers!

Help Make the Issue Personal. Tell Us Your Story   

State legislators need to hear how Tennessee ’s medical liability climate impacts your patients and your practice. Please share your story or the story of someone you know. These stories will be distributed to lawmakers as part of our MLR Campaign. Click Here.