Bill Klaproth (Host): This is an AAOMS on the Go podcast. I'm Bill Klaproth, and with me is Dr. Bill Jordan. Dr. Jordan currently serves as a consultant on the AAOMS Committee on Governmental Affairs. He previously chaired the committee. Dr. Jordan also has been very active with the Texas Society of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, and currently serves on the Board of the Association's Political Action Committee or TOMSPAC.

As such, he's extremely knowledgeable about advocacy at both the federal and state levels. Dr. Jordan is going to talk a little bit about how AAOMS advocates for its members, why advocacy is important to the average member and how members can get involved in advocating for the specialty. Dr. Jordan, welcome.

William V. Jordan, III, DDS: Thanks, Bill. Appreciate you having me.

Host: Yeah, it's great to talk with you. So first off, how would you describe advocacy?

William V. Jordan, III, DDS: That's a very interesting question, Bill, and probably a great place to start, obviously, but I probably have a little different take on advocacy. Traditionally I think most people, when they think of advocacy, they're going to think of taking some sort of action, picking up a cause and trying to influence or outcome some sort of legislative policy, whether that be positive for the association and its members and its patients or preventing some sort of negative legislation to occur and it's one of those mindsets that I think about when people talk about advocacy. You know, you think about Mel Gibson in the movie, The Patriot, and you get this vision of advocacy of him sitting on his horse with the tattered flag after a day in the battlefield, or probably more aptly for today's legislative tenure, is that you see him with a bayonet in one hand and the American flag in the other, and he's charging at his enemies with bullets flying.

Maybe that's a little sensationalized, but I think that's kind of always the way I think about advocacy. But a way maybe most people think about it, but for me, I think advocacy at its core, is really very simple. It's boiled down to relationships. Relationships that you have obviously with a legislator, somebody who's going to be introducing legislation. But it's more importantly or equally as important to have relationships with other organizations.

You know, the ADA, the AMA, or the ASA, which is the American Society of Anesthesiologists. It's all these different groups you want to have relationships with. If you can imagine trying to walk into your legislator's office and say, Hey, I, I heard you introduced a bill. I want to either advocate for you to vote for this bill or vote against it, whatever the case may be.

And if the legislator doesn't know who you are, doesn't know what you do, doesn't know anything about you, doesn't know anything at all; I mean, you're not going to be very productive, right? You're not going to have much of a chance.

And you think about the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, I think we have probably about 9,000 roughly, surgeons across the country. And so if we go into a legislator's office and say, Hey, I'm here representing AAOMS. Well, that's great. That's 9,000 people you represent, but there's 330ish million people in the United States, and so the percentages, if you do the percentage, that's going to be a very, very, very low percent. So if you can, through your relationships, have more people come to your side like Mel Gibson, if he tried to fight them alone, he's not going to win. But if he has a whole bunch of people with him all fighting the same fight, you have a much better chance.

And it's the same thing in advocacy. It's the same idea as having all these people with kind of a common good, if you will, for either them or their patients moving forward. That's to me where advocacy really sits is in the relationships.

Host: So, not as much riding a charging horse into battle, but just forming and creating relationships, doing the work that can become valuable in the future.

William V. Jordan, III, DDS: Absolutely.

Host: So then why is advocacy important for the average member? Why is it important to them?

William V. Jordan, III, DDS: These questions are great because I laugh at some of the simplicity of them, but I get this question a lot is why should I do this? Why should I get involved? And I get all the time, you know, I'll be talking at meetings or whatever it may be, and a young surgeon will come up and say, look I don't do the political stuff, right? I, that's not me. I just want to stay in my office. I just want to do my thing. I don't need to get involved. It doesn't have anything to do with me. And I laugh because that is the most absurd response to a question because it affects everything you do. And to simply think that you can go into your office and do your thing, is really uninformed because it touches every aspect that we do, from procedures, to how we get paid. And I've told people for years, my biggest point I want to get across to a lot, even young, I mean, older surgeons like anybody, is that, legislation can change what you do overnight.

We can go to bed this evening being able to do a procedure and wake up tomorrow morning and through legislative change you can't do what you could do yesterday. And that's it's happened in Florida. I mean, years ago the governor had an executive order. Because there was quite a number, it was three or four deaths that happened in a very short period of time in the state of Florida, anesthesia related. And so he just said, look, no more. You guys can't put people to sleep in the dental office till we figure out what's going on. So they woke up the next morning not being able to do what they could do.

So that has a huge impact. So I always tell people it's very simple. If you want to protect what you do and ultimately get paid for what you do, then yes, advocacy is important for every single member.

Host: So this really comes down to influencing politicians who will support legislation that is beneficial to AAOMS. And like you said, it can change overnight, so you've got to be working on those relationships all the time.

William V. Jordan, III, DDS: Right, and it's really not influencing them, it's more educating them, right?

Host: OK. Yeah.

William V. Jordan, III, DDS: Because that's really what it boils down to is that you can influence people, I mean, but it's really about educating. I want my legislator to know what I do, how I do it, how that the patients are the center of what I do and the safety that we provide for them and how we do that. That's how I want to educate them. And so I think that's the way you influence is through education. And when you explain to them and show them. Bring them to your office. Show them what we do. And, and I'm kind of talking about anesthesia because that's one of a hot button topic right now. But if you show them even what I mean, show them our office, show them how we're set up for emergency, how we want to take care of the patients and if they see that, then they're going to know. And so I think through education is really how, is going to be best for us to really influence them.

Host: Yeah, that's a great distinction. So thank you for sharing that. That's excellent. So then in what ways does AAOMS advocate for its members?

William V. Jordan, III, DDS: AAOMS does a fantastic job about providing opportunities for the members from an advocacy standpoint. Probably the, I think it's very, one of the most important, is Day on the Hill, and I know that you've already spoken with Dr. Morrison. He did a fantastic job.

Host: Yeah.

William V. Jordan, III, DDS: With an overview of Day on the Hill, and I echo a lot of the sentiments that he talked about, and for me, Day on the Hill is so important, again not only from an education standpoint, from our, to our legislators, but I want to educate our members on this process because the reality of it is you're not going to fly into D.C., spend a couple of days up on the Hill, walk into somebody's office and say, Hey, I'm here. I want you to vote for this bill. Okay, we're done. We're good. Let's get it passed. Let's move on. Right? Because that's not the way legislation and it doesn't work that way. It's, it is a marathon, not a sprint. And so, but I think what it does for our members is that when you go to Day on the Hill, you see how the sausage is made, so to speak. You understand you're walking through the halls of Congress and you're seeing the legislator from every single state, and when you're with your group of surgeons, there's maybe four or five or however many are with you, and you walk by and you see there's another group from the pork packers and another group from the Tire Association, another group from the automobile dealers say, and they're all up there doing the same thing.

You realize, holy cow, we are very small in the overall scheme of things and we have to work that much harder to make sure we educate people on what we do. And so that's where I think one of the real values of Day on the Hill is, at least from my perspective. The other aspects that AAOMS does a great job is grassroot efforts.

We're all boots on the ground. Everybody's heard the term. And so what AAOMS has done is made it, for our members, we made it so incredibly simple. They will have, when we have certain legislative needs or certain bills get introduced that we are going to want a positive or, maybe somebody to vote against whatever it may be.

AAOMS will have, will populate letters sent specifically to the members of Congress for each member. So when you go through the Association, you sign up for those text messages, you will get a text message on your, on your phone, just like you do from your wife or your husband, your kids, whoever it may be. And you can click on a link and in a matter of a few seconds, you can send in a pre-written letter specifically to your congressman and your senators outlining exactly what we want them to know about that bill.

And it's so easy to do. It just makes it so much easier. I mean, I think of it as that low hanging fruit. I mean, you know, you can grab that. That's something you can do easy. You can do that in between patients. There's really no excuse for that.

Another avenue that they use are what we call state advocacy grants, so we have money set aside for states to be able to use to fight certain legislative issues that they may have that come up. So let's say, for example, we were talking about anesthesia earlier, when states are confronted with an anesthesia challenge and it will happen. I can promise you. AAOMS is there in a supportive mechanism, but they're not going to do the fight, they're not going to do the heavy lifting. The states have to do it. And the state advocate grant, I think you, each state can get up to I think twenty grand, I believe is each year. I think there's a certain number amount, but it can be used for all different types of legislative needs. And so it's very easy to access those.

OMSPAC, our political action committee, we take funds from our members and that really gives us the opportunity to go out and support and build the relationships with the federal candidates.

And again, we go back to the relationships, right? Now we can say to them, Hey, we are going to support you. But it gives you opportunity to educate. You develop the relationship, you develop that education portal so that you can also offer to serve on some of their, a lot of times these legislators, they don't know anything about healthcare, so they're looking for people to help them with that. And so it gives you that foot in the door, if you will.

And the sad part about it is the percentage of participation is so incredibly low in OMSPAC, but the legislators actually have asked the question, what percentage of your members participate? And it's interesting because they want to know how many people care about your specialty? That's interesting because it's not like how much money do you have. How many of your members care enough about your specialty to contribute? And that's a really interesting point of view. And that's why I always encourage people that the PAC is where you can, if you will, say how much you care about the specialty.

Host: Right.

William V. Jordan, III, DDS: We have a wonderful lobbying team. They really are boots on the ground in D.C. They know the game. They know how to access the offices. They know how to develop those relationships because it's not about going in and saying, Hey, I want you to vote for this. It's about going in and saying, Hey, I'd like the opportunity to discuss this with you.

And at the end of that discussion, you hear how can I help you? What can we do to help you? Because many times when we meet with the office, say Hey, what do you think about this? This is something else that's important to the congressman or congresswoman, and so how can you help us with this?

And, it’s about getting involved and developing those relationships. And so, that's an amazing aspect that our lobbyists really help us with and I don't want to get too deep in. I'd be happy to talk about that all day. But we do have some, we do some policy, we have some committees through AAOMS, the Committee on Governmental Affairs, which I've been on and chaired.

We work very closely with our Committee on Healthcare and Policy Coding and Reimbursement, what we call CHPCR which they, oh my God. People on that committee, God love them cause that is a tough committee. They get into the weeds with coding and numbers and they do a yeoman, they do yeoman's work to really be able to help prevent Medicare pay cuts, for example, you know, hey, there was a 2.5% Medicare pay cut that was put up, but they through their work on the committee, were able to get that out and help prevent those cuts from happening.

And a lot of people think, oh, that doesn't affect me. I don't take Medicare. I don't really, I don't do Medicaid, I don't do Medicare. Well, it does affect you because all the private insurance companies are looking at what the government does. What does Medicare do? Oh, they got away with that 2.5% Medicare cut. I'm going to do the same thing. So it does affect them maybe and they don't maybe realize it. So again, it's just all back to that same recurring theme. It's all about the relationships that you have.

Host: Well through all of that, Dr. Jordan, it's easy to see all that AAOMS does for its members, and it seems pretty obvious why you would need members to get involved, but it sounds like maybe people don't get that message or don't feel like they need to get involved or want to get involved. So from your perspective, why should members get involved?

William V. Jordan, III, DDS: You made a great point as a very subtle reference there is why, if they're not as involved as they should be, why don't they? I mean, why should members get involved? I think we've laid some of the groundwork for that tonight, I mean, this afternoon, and to understand what it can do for you. But when it comes to why should members get involved, and I'm going to flip that in a minute, but, they need to get involved because these are elected officials, right? I mean, they work for us. People lose sight of that fact that our elected officials are there by us. We hire and fire our senators and our congressmen, right? We hire them by electing them. We fire them by not electing them.

So they work for us and the flip side of this is they want to hear from us, right? We hired them, so tell me what I can do for you. They're there to work for us, so they want to hear from the members. As good as our lobbying team is, and as fantastic as our AAOMS staff are, and they're second to none when it comes to this. They can do so much. They want to hear from the constituents. They want to hear from the people that voted them there, and then who better to tell our story than us, right? They don't want to hear from a lobbyist telling them why anesthesia is important. Why should I do that? Why should I not? Because they're hearing from other people.

And I know Dr. Morrison talked about this, and this is like advocacy 101, when you talk about a discussion over a particular legislative policy or is that, you know, you're sitting at a table talking about it, right? And if you're not at that table having the conversation, then you're going to be on the menu. There's going to be other people that are talking about you, and they're going to eat you up. That's what's going to happen. And so you have to be there at the table, talking about our issues and who better to, do you want somebody else talking about what you do on a daily basis or do you want to talk about it yourself?

So that's really why they should get involved. And the bigger question is why don't they get involved? That's a question that we continually try to answer on a yearly basis, it seems like. But I want people to understand just how important and how incredibly necessary it is for people to, to be involved.

Host: And you are generally advocating for members to do that, right? You definitely want them to be involved. So how can members get involved?

William V. Jordan, III, DDS: Oh, absolutely do we want them to get involved. That is 100% what we have focused on. How do we educate them? There's a lot of different ways that they can get involved. We've talked about the text messages, the, the grassroots. That's very easy, very simple. All you have to do is make sure you contact AAOMS.

Day on the Hill as Dr. Morrison, as I’ve talked about. That I’ve encouraged other members, other people might consider it to be a little more of a strong arm tactic like, “You’re going to Day on the Hill.” Because it is I, that’s how strongly I feel that it will, and it’s not for me because like I said, I mean the likelihood of you going, you’re not going to go in and get somebody to pass a bill in that afternoon, but it’s going to make such a profound impact on that particular surgeon that they’re going to get in, they’re going to go, oh yeah. And without fail, every single person that I have encouraged to go to Day on the Hill has contacted me and said thank you. That was a fantastic experience. I’ve never been. I mean, who doesn’t want to walk around Congress? I mean, that’s our nation’s capital. That’s the epicenter of what we do. It’s very cool to go up there and they do such a great job with that. So I’d encourage people to do that.

OMSPAC, we talked about contributing. We need contributions. That's part of how the game is played. And you can tell me your phone is broken down and you don't get text messages and you don't get emails about this and you're too busy in your office to take two days off cause you're the busiest oral surgeon in the entire country because nobody's busy in our office, right?

I mean, we're all in the same boat, so nobody's more busy. Nobody's, everybody would say, oh, well you can take off. I can't. Well, we all need to take off and go do that. You can tell me all those things, but you can give money. You can say, Hey, look you guys keep fighting the fight. Keep doing your thing. I can't go up there, but I'm going to give you some money because I want you to keep doing it. I understand. Let me give you some money to do that. And that's what we need from OMSPAC.

And you know, I tell people, get involved in your state and local society so that you can educate. You can take this message, if you will, and get it back to their local and your state levels.

Just get involved because I promise you, and I'm using this anesthesia challenge if you will, as an example, but it's coming and it's going to happen whether you realize it or not. So you need to be ready for that. And so I think that's, just get involved. Just find what works best for you, and do something. Just don't sit on the bench.

Host: Get in the game, right.

William V. Jordan, III, DDS: Get in the game. Absolutely.

Host: Get in the game. Well, this has been fantastic, Dr. Jordan. I appreciate your time today. One last question. Is there anything you would like to add as we talk about advocacy and AAOMS?

William V. Jordan, III, DDS: I guess Bill, the main thing, and we kind of hit on it, is I just want people to realize how important and what an impact it has on your day-to-day life. You don't think it does. And you're right, it doesn't have an impact on your practice until it does. And if you're going to wait until it does, it's too late. You have to be prepared and the way you do that is to get involved because nobody's going to do it, take care of your house, better than you do.

Host: Very well said. Dr. Jordan, thank you for your time today.

William V. Jordan, III, DDS: Oh, you bet, Bill. I enjoyed it. A lot of fun.

Host: Yeah, and hopefully your insight on advocacy will motivate members to get involved at the national level or in their states. To learn more about AAOMS Advocacy, you can visit AAOMS.org/Advocacy or contact the AAOMS Advocacy staff at 800-822-6637, or you can email advocacy@aaoms.org.

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Thanks for listening.