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CANDIDATES FOR AREA 7 TRUSTEE

Louis A. Moench M.D.

Distinguished Fellow (Member Since 1977)

Assembly Committee on Procedures:Chair, 1996-2003; Member, 1994-96

Executive Committee, APA Practice Research Network, 2000-

APA Steering Committee on Practice Guidelines, 1993-2005

APA Committee on Electroconvulsive Therapy, 1987-2000

Listed in The Best Doctors in America, 1995, 2000

The learned professions are defined by special knowledge, a code of ethics, and self-governance. APA governance should aim toward expanding and applying our special knowledge, fostering ethical decisions and conduct—not toward being all things to all psychiatrists. In apportioning our efforts, things that matter most should not yield to things that matter least. All candidates' statements list the things that matter. Some are perennial; for example, patients come first. Some are new; for example, in considering antidepressant safety and antipsychotic efficacy, our treatments need to be credible as well as incredible. As American society becomes ever more diverse, our professional society needs to be correct more than politically correct. U.S. House Speaker Tip O'Neil reminded us that "all politics is local." Most psychiatric polemics are local. My efforts will be to direct APA interest, expertise, and resources to support these and many other locals:

Ron Feigin, Alex Hafften, and Wandal Winn, who are developing telepsychiatry and teaching us cultural competence in the remote treatment of Alaskans; Jim Campbell and Brad Johnson in efforts to make psychiatrists the decision makers in an overheated managed care climate in a hot Arizona climate; Colorado's Jeremy Lazarus, Joann Ritvo, and Frank Guerra as they explore with AMA the mountain of costs and inefficiencies in our national system of health care and assess full access and peak efficiency; Vit Patel and Dr. Hawaii, Jeff Akaka, in countering a low in the spirit of aloha, inadequately trained non-M.D. would-be prescribers; Idahoans Steve Bushi and Cantril Nielsen, where child psychiatrists are a rare find, serving the potato state's small-fries; Jim Day in doing psychic trauma call after Magellan mugged Montana Medicaid; Nevada's Charles Price and Lynn Horne, calling the bluff of the "What happens here stays here" state, whose indigent mentally ill don't stay here for want of services; Al Vogel, Bill Ulwelling, and all willing New Mexico docs who pushed prescriptive privilege based on education, not legislation; Bob George, Constance Powell, and Mike Sasser, showing Oregon Plan budget slashers the high cost of cost-cutting in mental health; Meredith Alden, David Duncan, Curt Canning, and Michael Kalm, who calm the commotion whenever ultra-right wings flap in the Utah legislature to adopt the Scientology agenda; George Vlahakis, Larry Martin, and Bill Womack, who joined me in healing a rift between the great Washington D.B. and Washington, D.C.; Western Canadians Padraic Carr and Michael Myers, whose expertise from experience informs debate over the merits and maladies of a single-payer system; and expanded-scope-of-practice killers Art Merrell and Steve Brown, whose Wyoming DB is sparsely spread and must be supported by APA for the skies not to be cloudy all day.

About Myself

In the 1850s my forefathers from the Old Country crossed the plains for Utah. Since 1983 I have been crossing the country in planes for APA. My journey has been circuitous—church service in Germany, a public health project in Greece, and defending us all from the back seat of an F-105 in Vietnam. I love psychiatry. It allows me to be a philosopher, historian, theologian, and teacher and still doctor patients. Within the best vertically integrated medical system in the nation, IHC, my patients receive pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, and sometimes ECT, and my inpatients a visit seven days a week. My workweek is extended by forensics, professing, lecturing, ABPN examining, and legislative lobbying. My life is enriched by the string quartet I am married to and father of, and by my fourth-year psychiatry resident son and his wife and three grandbabies, who extend the Moench psychiatry legacy to three generations and—the babies are undecided—maybe four.

My Two Messages

This is the right time to see a psychiatrist. This is a great time to be a psychiatrist.

PRIMARY PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES AND SOURCES OF INCOME

Professional Activities
85%—Private group practice of inpatient and outpatient psychiatry

25%—Intermountain Health Care LDS Hospital

60%—Salt Lake Clinic (50 physician multispecialty clinic)

5%—Forensic psychiatry

10%—Professional association/university/volunteer activities

Income
95%—Private practice

5%—Forensic practice

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