To Former LACSW Members
By Terry Zenner, President

The seventy currently paid members of LACSW very much miss the nearly three hundred of you former members. As a one time drop-out, I can appreciate how easy it is for your business budget to allow these requests to go into “file 13”. Hear me out on why to reconsider.

We have always been primarily about legislation. The history of LACSW, and its equivalent namesakes, had it involved in establishing licensing and Vendorship; both vital to your practice. It monitored and acted against threats to these basic privileges through the years. When it came time to revise the licensing law we participated with force. We more recently sponsored and succeeded in passing legislation to eliminate the “consultation and collaboration with physicians” former requirement to get insurance reimbursement. We believe that we have in Maxine Cormier a premier lobbyist, who is truly invested in our best interests. She avails to us her years of experience and integrity at reasonable rates. She has stood by us in thick and thin budgetary times. But she too must buy groceries.

Louisiana has been a leader in fighting for clinical social workers. To my knowledge California is the only other state “society” besides Louisiana that hires its own lobbyist. We have been able to do this in the past largely as a result of your participation. The Clinical Social Work Federation, our national counterpart, has recently raised its dues per member. Starting July 1, 2005, LACSW will be required to forward $43.00 per member to CSWF, instead of the former $33.00. This is not all bad. CSWF alone can speak and work nationally to fight managed care and to preserve clinical social work as a profession. This does, however, take a bigger slice from our state budget. The best way to cover the difference is “to kick our membership up a notch!” We are committed to not raising our dues.

You already belong to NASW, you say? So do the majority of LACSW members, including myself. NASW undoubtedly covers a broad swath of social work concerns and does so well. It simply does not have its energy focused on clinical issues. I’ve sometimes had the thought that I may have been a participant in a profession that only lasted one generation! Look around. What I see are 1700 LPC’s and 900 LMFT’s growing by leaps and bounds. They belong to their professional membership organizations. They are not diluted by the myriad concerns of NASW. They are focused on clinical matters and rights. I know they won’t quit until they have diagnostic and Vendorship rights! The hungry fight for food more than the satiated. Our attaining licensing and Vendorship seems to have put some of us to sleep. Do you want to wake up to double the number of competitors, who can diagnose and claim insurance, who charge less than you, for whom managed care companies would salivate?

Do clinical social workers still have fights ahead in Louisiana? Draw your own conclusions. I see the above as warranting all of us being further on guard. I’m not saying the word terrorist, I’m saying your income continues to be threatened.

Additional issues remaining:

1) gaining diagnostic rights within Workman’s Comp. Law (it presently is in contradiction of our right to diagnose.

2) a firmer grip on our clients’ charts/protection from subpoena.

3) pushing the graduate schools to promote more, not less clinical courses.

4) issues that you want us, together as LACSW, to pursue.

Lest we think we’re hot stuff and can rest on our laurels, consider current happenings. We were invited to join a coalition of nurses, hospitals, physicians, psychologists, etc. They were going for a “prompt payment” bill this coming ’05 legislative session. You’d think that that grouping would constitute a formidable force. Sorry, we’re told, preliminary feelers revealed that the insurance industry had too many votes for such a significant proposal to gain approval. Thus the decision has been made to abandon full reform as futile. We will work this session with others to tweek existing laws regarding insurance reimbursement. Apparently us getting paid in a timely manner is a bit much for the skyscraper people. Well I’m not quite ready to eat cake. I say we give it our best shot. THAT could be greatly enhanced by your renewal in LACSW. The application is within this newsletter. Moreover, the LACSW board has approved a special rate to cover January 1 to July 1, 2005: $95.00. This is you investing in you. We promote that in our work. Let’s live it.

I Have a Dream (the demise of Managed-Care)
#7 by Terry Zenner

Left out of the President’s Update was the Managed/Unmanaged Care Committee Report by Leesa Sitter, Shreveport. As noted in the last newsletter I was going to print here in bold any positive response from MHN regarding their low rates. Leesa dutifully sent a written request from us, making the case for higher reimbursement of CSW’s. You’ll notice here nothing in bold. Just silence from them.

United Behavioral Health was contacted in writing with a request to re-instate authorized sessions from 5 to 10 on “products” in which authorizations have been reduced. A Ms. Higgins at UBH acknowledged the request (editorial: progress!) and said they are “reviewing it”. An office neighbor of mine is an insurance broker who once ran for Insurance Commissioner. He predicted to me recently that in a few short years there will only be UBH and Blue Cross operating in Louisiana. So, if you’re into contracts, those will be the two to have.

Three messages were left for Jametrias Smith at 800-305-3720 ext. 4126 of American Psych. Systems by Leesa Sitter. There has been no response to our requests for an increase in standard authorized sessions.

So there you have it folks. An organization representing 70 of your fellow professionals got locked out 2 out of 3 times. So don’t feel badly if your individual efforts go unheeded. It is simply the nature of the managed-care beast. That’s why I have operated sans managed-care for the past five years, and I’m still breathing. In the tradition of this column I offer you more practice ideas outside of DSM diagnosis:

Specialize in:

31. Bereavement
32. EAP work
33. Gay-Lesbian issues
34. Gambling Addiction
35. Families of the Mentally Ill

President’s Update
By Terry Zenner

Fourteen LACSW board members took time away from their practice to attend the board meeting in Baton Rouge December 10th. The minutes (by Leesa Sitter of Shreveport) were approved as was the Treasurer’s Report (by Charlene Spears of Lafayette). The latter is posted separately within. The Legislative Report was provided by Deborah Fernandez of Baton Rouge. To avoid redundancy see the essence of the latter with the article addressed to former members.

LACSW will be sponsoring a workshop in Shreveport on March 11, 2005 and in New Orleans June 17, 2005. Both will be presented by our former President, Darryl Ducote. He has schooled himself extensively in the research-based marital therapy of John Gottman, Ph.D., and will be sharing his theories and methods. Darryl essentially is donating this time as a contribution to LACSW. We are most grateful! Please help him help us by attending. (Kinda’ reminds me of a good humored way of collecting past due bills. I have a rubber stamp that reads, “Please pay us, so I can pay them, and they can pay him, and he can pay you!” Hey, it’s telling it like it is.

Skip Morlier, New Orleans Chair of the Education Committee, has been working with the committee to get organized earlier about upcoming workshops. They’ve also created a “to do” checklist to review for each workshop, so details get accomplished.

As is evident, the Membership Committee has been active as well. Maria Klette-Ketchum of Covington hosted a gathering of six committee members in November. They reviewed 35 membership ideas and co-chair, Larry Gooch of Baton Rouge, brought back 14 of these for board approval. This special edition is just one of the ideas. So, please note that we are all in charge of membership; the former members are in a position to do the most by simply joining.

LACSW’s Mentoring groups have been active in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lafayette. Over a dozen graduate students have taken advantage for our more experienced CSW’s offering a monthly 1 1/2 hour session to exchange professional ideas; “anything” short of supervision or therapy. Both ends of the age spectrum see it as beneficial.

We continue to update our website at www.lacsw.org. There you can find a list of members, a place for members to update their data, upcoming LACSW sponsored workshops, membership application forms, and a form to send the Insurance Commissioner to report lagging payment of claims. Thanks from me to all of the board members for your involvement.

From A Friend’s Christmas Letter
by Jenny Domingue

Tis the season of peace, love, and gratitude for all that we have, which for many of us has turned into the season of stress, sickness, and a focus on what we lack. Not enough time, money, energy take your pick! We can all find what we lack. However, we have a choice. We can take a breath and in any moment decide to remember all that we have. We can choose to see that what we have, what we do, and what we are, is enough. We have enough, we do enough, and we are enough—and enough is enough!!

Limerick

There was a faith-healer of Deal

Who said, “Although pain isn’t real,

If I sit on a pin

And it punctures my skin,

I dislike what I think that I feel.”

A Belated Welcome to New Members

Caroyn Wanek, MET.

Carolyn Fabre, B.R

Johnnie Gachassin,, LFT.

Angel Huval, LFT.

Marjorie Roniger, N.O.

Marjorie Roniger, N.O.

Make  a donation today to the LACSW PAC

c/o Justin Schleis
5425 Brittany Drive, Ste. A
Baton Rouge, LA 70808-9170

Balance Sheet 12/10/04

Account                                     Balance Sheet as of 12/10/2004

Schedule of the LACSW Board Meetings:

Fridays, 10:00A.M.- ~ 2:00P.M.

Behavioral Hospital of Baton Rouge

February 11, 2005

April 1, 2005

June 17, 2005

August 11, 2005

Any member is welcome to attend. The meetings always expand knowledge of what’s happening in many domains of social work. It’s a good way to taste whether you might want to commit to being a board member.

If interested, call for directions: 337-989-9350 (Terry Zenner)

Social Work Search http://www.socialworksearch.com has a searchable Jobs Database. It is new and expected to grow over time. If you know anyone who is interested in posting a Social Work related job, you could inform them of this.

Upcoming Workshops

____________________________________________

WAKE-UP CALL: Technocrats are Taking Over the Practice of Medicine
(reprinting authorized by Twila Brase)

(St. Paul, Minnesota) - A report meant to challenge current thinking in health care reform was released today by Citizens' Council on Health Care (CCHC).

Extensively documented, the report: "How Technocrats are Taking Over the Practice of Medicine: A Wake-up Call to the American People," shines a bright light of openness on the terms "evidence-based medicine" and "best practices," including the purposes of proponents and the concerns of critics.

"The public needs to understand that evidence-based medicine is an attack on the patient-doctor relationship. EBM is not individualized care. It is group-think medicine," says Twila Brase, president of CCHC and author of the report.

Noting the recent and growing inclusion of these terms in state and federal law, Ms. Brase told news reporters last Thursday at an special press briefing:

"If evidence-based medicine is not understood for what it is, managed care will use it to solidify control over medical decisions and the practice of medicine. Managed care will become the law of the land."

CCHC stresses the following five points:

1) The term "evidence-based medicine" (EBM) cannot be taken at face value. EBM is managed care. Same game, different name.

2) Science, the purported foundation of EBM, is not incontestable. In research, there are subjective choices all along the road to creating the "evidence" of EBM.

3) Practice guidelines, used to implement EBM, have significant problems. These include out-of-date, biased, conflicting with each other, lack of individualization, and single-disease focus.

4) Under EBM, practice guidelines are becoming treatment mandates. Financial consequences are increasingly a possibility for doctors who do not follow guidelines issued by health plans or government. Computer systems to track and report physician adherence are being established.

5) Patient harm can result from EBM, and its treatment mandates. Practice guidelines are written based on data collected from medical records of many patients. They do not focus on the care, or the unique circumstances and physiology, of individual patients. And, as has been reported in England, they can be used to implement health care rationing.

"Control over medical decisions is being shifted from doctors to data crunchers; from professionals at the bedside to bureaucrats in big offices," says Ms. Brase.

"The public should not be fooled by the nifty-sounding names. Evidence-based medicine is managed care masquerading as science,"

____________________________________________________

The CCHC report can be viewed at: http://www.cchconline.org/pdfreport/

Twila Brase RN, PHN

President—Citizens' Council on Health Care

1954 University Ave. W., Suite 8

St. Paul, MN 55104

651-646-8935 phone

651-646-0100 fax

http://www.cchconline.org

Two Riddles
By Terry Zenner

What does a twenty year private practitioner do during a practice lull? He interprets it as part of the normal ebb and flow of life, knowing from experience, this too shall pass. He uses it as an opportunity to squirrel away script, like this, for better practice days, when less time might be available for newsletter editing. Be at peace then, those of you who concern yourself with such. “There is a season for everything.” Each season is to be assigned its meaning by the one living it. That meaning need not be what it appears on the surface. Don’t repeat; Reframe. Reframe. (Well, that’s kind of a riddle).

I can never hear the word, riddle, without recalling, “Here’s a riddle that’s a killer, who the hell is William Miller?!” The year was 1964, and the Republican alumni from my undergraduate school were quite upset that the students had hung a hundred foot banner of this riddle on the outside of a dorm wall at St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota. William Miller had come to campus to give a speech. He was Barry Goldwater’s running mate against Lyndon Baines Johnson, who later won. Four long year’s later LBJ went on TV to announce, “I will not seek the Democratic nomination, and if so nominated, will not serve the office of the President of the United States.” Vietnam had crushed him. I arrived home from Vietnam in August of 1968 to see police and military quell riots in the streets of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. I was probably the only GI who had a Eugene McCarthy sticker in my “hooch” in Vietnam. (The latter was also an alumnus of SJU.) Those remain indelible memories and a free history lesson for you “yutes.”

News Corrections

Just to keep the record straight, it was the famous Whistler’s Mother, not Hitler’s, that was exhibited at the recent meeting of the Pleasantville Methodists. There is nothing to be gained in trying to explain how the error occurred.

—-Titusville (Pa.) Herald

Tuesday’s edition called a charge residents pay for 911 service a ‘surge’ charge. It is, of course, a sir charge.

—Carlsbad Current-Argus

Sunday’s Lifestyle story about Buddhism should have stated that Siddartha Guatama grew up in Northern India, not Indiana.

—-Bloomington Herald-Times

November is a heavy publishing month for all newspapers and with large issues misprints inevitably increase. Note, however, that there are 5 000 characters in every full column of type. Even if there are five misprints a column that is only an error of 0,1 percent. We are working constantly on the problem, aiming to keep problem, aiming to keep

—Editor,  The Johannesburg Star

“I would like to point out that what I did in fact write was that the council forced piped TV ‘on us’ not ‘up us’ as printed in the County Times on October 25. T.A. Wilkinson”

—-County Times & Express

LACSW
P.O. Box 14153
Baton Rouge, LA 70808
Phone: 225-761-1668
Fax: 337-989-8458
Email: LACSW2@hotmail.com

Reminder: Please go to our website, www.lacsw.org to update your data. This is free publicity for your practice.

Our Special Thanks to Behavioral Hospital of Baton Rouge for hosting LACSW's meetings.

Behavioral Hospital of Baton Rouge
440 North Blvd.
Baton Rouge, LA 70806

Inpatient Admissions: 225-343-1994 or 800-215-0108

Moving? Missed an Issue?

Please contact us at:

LACSW P.O. Box 14153 Baton Rouge, LA 70808
or
lacsw2@hotmail.com

To Contact Your Licensing Board:

Send $5.00 to the board for a copy of “The Rules, Standards, and Procedures of the Louisiana Social Work Practice Act– amended Oct.24, 2003.

Louisiana State Board of Social Work Examiners 18550 Highland Road—Suite B Baton Rouge, LA 70809 Phone: (225) 756-3470 or 800-521-1941 (LA only) email: socialwork@labswe.org Website: http://www.labswe.org

Contact Information:

LACSW Officers:

President– Terry Zenner 337-989-9350

President Elect— Judith Haspel 504-891-5807

Secretary— Leesa Sitter 318-226-8753

Treasurer— Charlene Spears 337-237-9150

Regional Board—Baton Rouge

Anita Evans, Deborah Fernandez, Judy Holland, Maureen Powell, Justin Schleis, Larry Gooch

Covington— Carol Miles

Lafayette - Connie Konikoff

New Orleans– Anne Heard, Mimi Jalenak, Donna Lewis, George Morlier, Laura Myers, Marjorie Roniger

Shreveport— Beth Porter, Peggy Salley

Slidell— Maria Klette-Ketchum