Dr. Langston highlights LUGPA advocacy efforts

In this video, Joshua Langston, MD, discusses legislative and advocacy priorities that were highlighted during the 2023 LUGPA Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida. Langston is the chief medical officer at Urology of Virginia in Virginia Beach.

Video Transcript:

Could you recap the political affair update that was presented at this year’s LUGPA meeting?

LUGPA's very active in Washington DC, advocating for our members and our practices, and most importantly, for our patients. There's a lot of activity, as there always is, in DC, where we are educating and defending the role of independent urology and independent medicine in general. We feel like we are providing care better and closer to home for our patients and providing access that otherwise doesn't exist. Hospital consolidation has been continuing to progress over these last many years, offering higher costs and less access for patients. So, we have been very effective as an organization at bringing that message to legislators in DC, and continue to do that over the last year.

What is the biggest story in health policy that urologists should be paying attention to?

It's hard to say if there's 1 issue, but there's several small things that are affecting our ability to provide care for our patients, even in the ways that we have been, especially coming out of the pandemic, with a lot of the waivers that have expired. So, even the way that we're able to distribute medications [and] continue on with telehealth that had been very successful during the pandemic. We are really engaged on ensuring that a lot of the progress that had been made and the care that was delivered through the pandemic is able to continue on, specifically related to how we're able to distribute medications to patients, and also telehealth.

This transcription has been edited for clarity.