As drug shortages continue to worsen and negatively affect patient care across the U.S., the AMA has adopted policy to strengthen its ongoing efforts to address this growing public health crisis.

The AMA’s recently adopted policy supports diversifying drug manufacturing and supply chains and stabilizing the generic drug market, as well as opposing practices such as pharmacy benefits manager formulary restrictions that worsen drug shortages. According to statistics from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, a spike in new drug shortages in 2022 has led to the highest levels of drug shortages in the U.S. since 2014.

“Drug shortages are the highest we’ve seen in a decade, making it more and more difficult for patients and physicians across the country to get necessary medications,” said AMA Immediate Past President Jack Resneck Jr., MD.

“The nation’s drug supply shouldn’t be in constant turmoil because there aren’t enough manufacturers, or the profit margin is too thin to incentivize production,” Dr. Resneck added. “We must continue to push for actions to mitigate drug shortages that will help ensure the drug supply chain is more resilient and adaptable so our patients can get the medications they need when they need them.”

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Bipartisan support to cancel the entirety of the 3.37% Medicare physician pay cut that took effect Jan. 1 is growing, with nearly 200 members of Congress co-signing a letter urging House and Senate leaders to expeditiously pass legislation to address 2024 Medicare payment cuts.

“We in Congress must continue our partnership with the physician and provider community to ensure that Medicare patients continue to have access to quality care,” says the letter, led by Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, MD (R-Iowa), Ami Bera, MD (D-Calif.), Larry Bucshon, MD (R-Ind.) and Kim Schrier, MD (D-Wash.).

Physicians, who “are confronting inflationary pressures and workforce shortages, need Congress to prevent this cut, which will add significant burdens to the health care infrastructure and the communities they serve,” says the letter, sent to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), as well as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).

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Physicians and medical students’ time is more squeezed than ever, so it’s no surprise that a growing number of physicians and future doctors are taking advantage of listening to podcasts to enhance their knowledge of trends in medicine while commuting, running errands, making dinner or doing housework.

In 2023, more than 530,000 episodes of AMA podcasts were downloaded as listeners learned from doctors and other experts who give voice to an array of original AMA podcasts.

Below, find six of our top episodes from across the AMA podcast network.

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This year saw hundreds of bills introduced across the nation to inappropriately expand scope of practice for nonphysician providers such as nurse practitioners, advanced practice registered nurses, optometrists, psychologists, naturopaths, pharmacists, physician assistants, athletic trainers and—yes—even music therapists.

New research, some aided by the AMA Health Workforce Mapper but much it conducted by physicians and experts outside the AMA, is reshaping our understanding of how scope of practice expansions affect health system costs, care quality and more.

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The AMA is strongly supporting a bill introduced in Congress that would completely eliminate the 3.37% Medicare physician pay cut scheduled to take effect Jan. 1. …

With the bill’s introduction, now “patients and physicians have a clear-eyed view on how to protect Medicare from injurious cuts,” said AMA President Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH.

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Physicians can be healers, caregivers, scientists, advocates, change-makers and decision-makers. They also are often very busy, which is why our readers are the beneficiaries of the physicians who generously shared their personal stories, innovative approaches and stirring insights.

Many of the doctors who are fighting burnout, making telehealth work in practice, advancing health equity, and inspiring others with their physician advocacy across the career spectrum have taken time from their hectic schedules this year to explore how they are moving medicine forward in exclusive, in-depth Q&A-format interviews with the AMA.

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Physicians know all too well about the headaches and heartaches associated with prior authorization in medicine today. Here’s a handy glossary—or perhaps a devil’s dictionary—to help guide you through the folly, with pointers to how the AMA is standing up to insurance companies to eliminate care delays, patient harm and practice hassles.

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Through various actions at the 2023 AMA Interim Meeting, the House of Delegates has made it unmistakably clear that the unsustainable Medicare payment system poses a dire threat to patients’ access to high-quality physician care across the nation. In addition to this year’s 2% cut in Medicare physician pay, doctors face a further 3.37% cut set to take effect in January. After adjusting for inflation, physician pay actually fell by 26% since 2001.

“Physicians heed the idea of ‘first do not harm,’” said AMA President Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH. “Yet the payment system year after year inflicts harm on the ability of physician practices to stay afloat. We also are aware of the First Law of Holes. When you find yourself in one, stop digging. We are in a veritable crater. Cutting payments is only taking us deeper.”

My latest for the AMA. Read the whole shebang, and catch up on the other highlights from the Interim Meeting in National Harbor, Maryland.

Nearly 700 physicians and medical students are gathering this week just a few miles away from Capitol Hill for the 2023 AMA Interim Meeting, where they will consider proposals across a wide range of clinical practice, payment, medical education and public health topics.

But there is one issue that is clearly at the top of agenda for the AMA House of Delegates: The need to stop the 3.37% Medicare physician pay cut set for 2024 and enact broader Medicare reforms to ensure that the 65 million Americans who rely on it have continued access to high-quality physician care.

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A coalition of physician members of Congress has introduced a discussion draft of legislation to reform the budget-neutrality policies applied to the Medicare physician payment schedule.

This legislative proposal, largely based on work that emerged from the AMA Medicare Reform Workgroup, offers practical policy improvements that provide some needed stability to the physician payment system by assuring that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ payment policy is based on reality—not projections.

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The country’s No. 1 health insurer, UnitedHealthcare, and another insurance giant—Cigna Healthcare—recently announced tentative steps to reduce the volume of care-delaying, time-wasting prior authorizations they require.

Starting this month, several UnitedHealthcare plans will start eliminating the prior authorization requirement for many procedure codes that the insurer says account for nearly 20% of its overall prior authorization volume. The company also said that next year it will implement a “gold card” program allowing those who qualify to follow a “simple administrative notification process for most procedure codes” instead of prior authorization. Cigna, meanwhile, said it is removing nearly 25% of medical services from prior authorization requirements.

The insurers’ efforts “begin to reduce the overwhelming volume of prior authorization requirements that are threatening patients’ health and wasting valuable health care resources,” said AMA Immediate Past President Jack Resneck, MD.

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Bipartisan legislation called the “GOLD CARD Act” to give physicians relief from the time-wasting burden of prior authorization has been introduced in this session of Congress.

H.R. 4968, the Getting Over Lengthy Delays in Care as Required by Doctors Act of 2023, would exempt physicians from Medicare Advantage plan prior authorization requirements so long as 90% of the physicians’ prior authorization requests were approved in the preceding 12 months. Medicare Advantage plan-issued gold cards would be applicable only to items and services—and exclude drugs—and remain in effect for at least a year. The legislation is based on a similar law enacted in Texas that took effect in 2021.

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The powerful House Ways and Means Committee has advanced provisions that would help bring badly needed reforms to the prior-authorization process within Medicare Advantage.

The provisions passed last week hew closely to the Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act. That bipartisan legislation was introduced by Reps. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., Mike Kelly, R-Pa., Ami Bera, MD, D-Calif., and Larry Bucshon, MD, R-Ind. The bill’s provisions are strongly supported by the AMA, which played a major role in securing enough cosponsors to ensure it passed the House of Representatives (PDF) last September. The legislation, however, stalled in the Senate due to a flawed $16 billion cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

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