Sept. 15, 2008 issue
Medical groups consider merger
By Melanie Zuercher for Mennonite Medical Association/Mennonite Nurses AssociationPage:
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Fraser, Colo. — At the joint annual convention of Mennonite Medical Association and Mennonite Nurses Association June 19-22 at Snow Mountain Ranch, participants decided to consider becoming one new association for Anabaptist health-care professionals.
After separate business meetings, members of the medical association and nurses association asked for a study team to be formed that will develop a recommendation either to continue the separate structures or combine into one.
The team will make its recommendation by the June 2009 convention.
The medical association includes physicians, dentists and medical or dental students who are members of Anabaptist congregations. The nurses association includes nurses and student nurses.
In 2007, medical association members voted unanimously to change their bylaws to open membership to all graduate-level health-care professionals: physicians’ assistants, optometrists, physical therapists and others. By definition, nurses with graduate degrees, such as nurse practitioners, would also be included.
About 120 members of the organizations and their families attended the convention, with the theme “Go, Tell It on the Mountain.”
Vern Rempel, pastor of First Mennonite Church in Denver, led worship and music.
Keynote speakers Doug Eby of Anchorage, Alaska, and Jeff Roth Martin of Lancaster, Pa., spoke from different perspectives on health care in the United States.
Roth Martin gave statistics pointing to a broken health-care system.
“As Mennonites, we have a particular historical precedent related to providing health care to those without it in this country and abroad,” he said. “How do we join this debate? How do our traditional concepts of mutual aid help us in this?”
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