BRI is proud to be partnering with American Enterprise Institute to bring you 

BRI Leadership Conference 2016

Doctors as Leaders, Doctors as Advocates

Why did you decide to become a doctor?

Do you say that you want to help people in a meaningful way that also is personally challenging? We think that's a great description of what it means to practice medicine. What can be better than the excitement of really cool applied science, the challenge of life-long professional growth (there's always something new to learn), and—most importantly, the privilege of caring for people through some of the most joyous and tragic events of their lives?

As doctors, we are privy to life's most powerful and intimate moments . . . watching a child be born . . . holding the hand of a dying patient . . . listening to the struggles of living with a chronic disease . . . the look of relief and gratitude after a successful surgery.

And let's not forget the incredible experience of working as part of dedicated team — in our offices, hospitals, charity clinics, and medical missions.

Yes, being a doctor in America is a great vocation.

Yet, American medicine is at a crossroads. Concern over access, quality, and affordability have many turning to government to supply solutions — at the risk of impeding innovation, burying physicians in burdensome regulations, ratcheting back pay, interjecting bureaucratic mandates that get between doctors and their patients, and reducing a doctor's ability to practice medicine according to his or her own experience, judgement and skills.

At BRI, we declare that there exists a need to reinvent physician leadership in an age of teamwork. There is an urgency for doctors to be stronger, more vocal leaders, not only among medical colleagues, but in the wider community. There's a very real need for a new kind of doctor, as a leader and advocate for those who have been priced out of affordable medical care. That means physicians need to understand economics to be able to advocate effectively for policies that produce lasting improvements for everyone, not ones that simply make us "feel good."

This will require a new kind of doctor—one who not only practices medical excellence, but who also adds a voice of leadership so desperately needed in today's healthcare climate.

That's what this year's conference is all about: Earned leadership, with non-paternalistic, informed compassion and effective advocacy.