Mega Doctor News
As originally published by Mega Doctor News in its newsprint edition June 2018
San Antonio, Texas – Austin surgeon David C. Fleeger, MD, is the new president-elect of the Texas Medical Association (TMA). The TMA House of Delegates policymaking body elected Dr. Fleeger today at TexMed, the association’s annual conference, in San Antonio.
“I am honored and humbled to be chosen to ultimately serve as the voice of the strongest medical association in the country,” said Dr. Fleeger.
After serving as president-elect for one year, Dr. Fleeger will be installed as TMA’s 154th president in May 2019 at TexMed in Dallas.
Dr. Fleeger is a board-certified colon and rectal surgeon and managing partner of his seven-member group practice.
Caring for patients every day enables Dr. Fleeger to observe the best — and sometimes the most aggravating — parts of medicine. He said a priority for America’s largest state medical society is to work to remove barriers between physicians and the patients who need their care.
“I understand (and am equally frustrated by) the challenges that our patients and our physicians must face,” he said, citing bureaucratic red tape and unnecessary overregulation by government and health insurers. “As we face those many challenges, it remains imperative that we continue unwavering focus on the needs of Texas physicians … no matter their specialty, location, mode of practice, gender, or age,” he said.
Dr. Fleeger believes TMA’s greatest strength lies in advocating for physicians, so they can focus more on their patients and less on filling out forms and other bureaucratic tasks. It’s all about the patient, he says.
“Our patients should know that by protecting the autonomy and strength of our physicians’ practices, we protect the patient-physician relationship.”
Dr. Fleeger has worked to protect that relationship in 27 years of rising through the TMA ranks. He first served as the TMA Young Physician Section’s delegate to the American Medical Association (AMA). He also served as chair of the section’s governing council, and later chaired both the TMA Committee on Physician Distribution and Health Care Access and the TMA Council on Practice Management Services. He served on TMA’s Council on Health Care Quality and Ad Hoc Committee on Health Care Reform.
He eventually rose to become secretary and later vice-chair of the TMA Board of Trustees, on which he still serves. He represents Texas as a delegate to the AMA House of Delegates and is active in TEXPAC, TMA’s political action committee; and the TMA Foundation philanthropic organization. He also is secretary-treasurer of the TMA PracticeEdge physician services organization board of managers.
Dr. Fleeger is a gubernatorial appointee to the governing board of the Texas Health Services Authority, to promote and coordinate health information technology throughout Texas.
A past president of both the Travis County Medical Society (CMS) and the Texas Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons,
Dr. Fleeger also served on the board of the Central Texas Regional Blood and Tissue Center, and as chair of the TMF Health Quality Institute Board of Trustees. He also served as St. David’s Medical Center’s chief of staff and on its Board of Trustees.
An avid traveler and photographer, Dr. Fleeger makes volunteer medical mission trips to Guatemala each year, for which St. David’s selected him to receive its Frist Humanitarian Award. In 2012, Travis CMS honored Dr. Fleeger with the Gold-Headed Cane Award as Physician of the Year.
Jamie, Dr. Fleeger’s wife of 33 years, works as a physician assistant in family medicine. Their daughter, Lauren Seesel, and her husband Jim live in Chicago. Dr. Fleeger’s parents live in Houston.
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