Advocacy Update

AMA Offers AAHPM Key Opportunities to Help Shape Healthcare Policy

Jacqueline M. Kocinski, MPP

In June, Andrew W. Gurman, MD, outgoing president of the American Medical Association (AMA), spoke to the hundreds of physicians, residents, and medical students gathered in Chicago for the AMA Annual Meeting. “For our colleagues out there who had not yet realized the importance of advocacy,” he said, “well, I hope 2017 has been their wake-up call.” He was, of course, referring to efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Gorman went on to review AMA’s priorities for health system reform, noting that “each of us has a crucial role to play in creating a healthcare system that better delivers for our patients.”

Reflecting on his year at the helm of the Board of Trustees, Gurman went on to update the attendees on how the AMA was “working in the trenches” to fix what matters to physicians, including fighting anticompetitive insurance mergers, successfully advocating for reduced reporting burdens under the Medicare Quality Payment Program, and creating a coalition with 16 other organizations to reform the prior-authorization process. In his remarks that followed, AMA Executive Vice President and CEO James L. Madera, MD, highlighted initiatives he said paint a picture of leadership that defines the AMA. These include the STEPS Forward™ practice-improvement modules, MACRA Action Kit, Accelerating Change in Medical Education Innovation Consortium, and healthcare tech incubator MATTER, which the AMA cocreated. He stressed that the AMA’s “partnerships with specialty societies are central to shared success.”