NGO Pushes for Centralized Power, Control Over Physician Licensure

James Holbrooks

On January 9, 2014, a bipartisan group of sixteen senators sent a letter to the Federation of State Medical Boards commending it for “advancing solutions toward multistate practice through more efficient sharing of medical licensure information.” Sounds hot, I know. Stick with me. 

The letter was in response to the FSMB’s continuing efforts to overcome issues facing the concept of telemedicine. As the name implies, telemedicine is the practice of providing medical care at a distance. This encompasses everything from a simple phone consultation to something as complex as remote surgery via robotics, often referred to as telesurgery. 

Specifically, the senators were addressing a piece of model legislation being drafted by the FSMB that would come to be known as the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact. Purportedly, the compact is designed to streamline the process of licensing physicians who seek to practice in multiple states. As it stands, this can be tricky. Each state has its own certifications a physician must hold to be legally allowed to practice there. So in theory, a doctor providing telemedical care across state lines—say, a routine checkup via Skype—could potentially be violating state law if the requisite licenses weren’t in order. 

So far so good, yeah? Here we have a problem, specific to our modern age, being taken on through a concerted, common sense measure. I mean, you’d have to be nuts to see the compact as anything other than the honest attempt at facilitation is so clearly is, right? Well, as it happens, there are still a few nuts out there. 

How to Lose Friends on Social Media: Question Authority

Pawel Art

James Holbrooks

I’m gonna lose friends. I realize now it’s inevitable.

Not real friends. The real stuff is forged from memories and adamantium. I’m not worried about that. No, the friends I’m destined to lose are the type that can simply click a button and disappear me from their timeline.

I’ve been on Facebook since Christmas—as in three weeks ago. I’m sure that’s hilarious to some. But it was always a conscious decision not to partake, and I stand by it. In the end there were two reasons that finally got me to pull the trigger. One was the very simple fact that I’ve been homesick lately and Facebook seemed like the best way to get a fix. The other reason was much more analytical: I’ve been writing so much about social media I figured I owed it to myself to fully explore it.

And it was wild. A millisecond after I signed in friend requests came flying at me from all directions. Within days I was in contact with dozens of people from my past—old friends, extended family, exes, acquaintances, high school classmates I’d nodded to a few times in the hallway…all people I’d personally known. That was my rule, ya see. I’d promised myself that Facebook would be strictly for happy thoughts. I had Twitter for all that nasty political shit, so Facebook would stay clean.

What I very quickly discovered, though, was that nearly all these new “friends” of mine were still of the same upright, conservative mentality that our particular little patch of Texas churns out. Which is absolutely fine. I left well over a decade ago but that impulse in me to take people as they come can never be excised. How could it, considering where I’m from?