The AMA is giving physicians across the country the resources they need to take advantage of the August recess to make face-to-face contact with their members of Congress to press the need to enact systemic Medicare physician payment reforms to protect older adults’ access to high-quality care.

While such an overhaul to Medicare’s unsustainable physician pay system is unlikely to happen during this election year, these important personal contacts with members of Congress can help shape legislative progress in 2025.

My latest for the AMA. Read the whole shebang.

The AMA wrapped up its Annual Meeting earlier this week. Click below to read the rolling highlights blog I edited to cover the meeting, along with some stories I wrote.

• Highlights from the 2024 AMA Annual Meeting
• Why Medicare pay reform is the AMA’s top advocacy priority
• AMA steps up to fight scope creep that threatens patient safety

One of the biggest drivers of physician burnout are the clerical burdens that gobble up more than half of doctors’ days—and many nights and weekends to boot. Perhaps the most galling part is that a notable chunk of these burdens are based on outright myths, misconceptions and misapplications of the morass of complicated regulations that govern American health care.

That is where the AMA’s “Debunking Regulatory Myths” series comes in to provide clarity to physicians and their care teams. The series is part of the AMA’s practice-transformation efforts and helps reduce guesswork and administrative burdens so physicians’ focus can be on streamlining clinical workflow processes, improving patient outcomes and increasing satisfaction.

My latest for the AMA. Read the whole shebang.

In the nation’s first full year after widespread availability of safe and effective SARS-CoV-2 vaccines to combat COVID-19, U.S. health spending on physician services grew at just a 2.6% rate in 2022. That was down from 7% in 2020, 4.8% in 2021 and 3.9% in the prepandemic year of 2019.

That slowdown was “due to both slower growth in prices and utilization of services,” according to an AMA Policy Research Perspectives report. The sluggish growth in physician spending pales in comparison to the continued growth in spending on prescription drugs, which saw 8.4% growth in 2022.

Moreover, even as the rate of physician growth slowed, the report concludes that “the big picture measures for 2022 suggest that U.S. health spending is back to similar growth rates as before the pandemic.”

My latest for the AMA. Read the whole shebang.

After helping state medical associations and national specialty societies defeat more than 100 bills to inappropriately expand nonphysicians’ scope of practice in 2023, the AMA is again relentlessly joining its allies in organized medicine to continue the fight for physician-led, team-based care in this year’s legislative session.

This intensive and effective advocacy effort has ranged across the country, as the AMA has helped battle scope creep in Alaska, Connecticut, Georgia, Oklahoma, New Hampshire and elsewhere.

My latest for the AMA. Read the whole shebang.

After a routine review of practice operations in mid-February, Omar Maniya, MD, opted to extend the line of credit for the 40-employee New Jersey primary care physician practice that he serves as CEO.

Little did he know the move would prove to be a just-in-time lifeline as within days the cyberattack-driven Change Healthcare cyber outage would have a devastating financial impact on physician practices across the country. At Dr. Maniya’s practice, called Maniya Health, “95% of our revenue vanished overnight,” forcing the practice to borrow nearly $200,000 to keep things going.

“We’ve never used our line of credit—ever—until this,” said Dr. Maniya, who trained as an emergency physician and provides urgent care three days a week for the practice in addition to his executive role. “Having that cushion is what allowed us to survive the storm without having to lay off or furlough employees.”

Maniya Health has had to reschedule iron-infusion appointments and reexamine its supply-ordering, and it is far from alone in feeling the effects of the cyber outage, as informal AMA survey findings (PDF) show. According to the survey, conducted March 26–April 3 with a convenience sample of 1,400 respondents, restricted claims-processing functionality since the cyberattack has resulted in:

• 36% of respondents reporting suspension in claim payment.
• 32% being unable to submit claims.
• 22% being unable to verify eligibility for benefits.

Practices of 10 physicians or fewer appear to be particularly hard hit. They represented 78% of all respondents.

The survey was conducted after UnitedHealth Group, which owns Change Healthcare, said that claims would be flowing by the weekend of March 23. Despite the company’s assurances, serious disruptions continue.

My latest. Read the whole shebang.

The Biden administration has recently taken some positive steps to help more Americans gain access to high-quality health insurance coverage.

First is a newly finalized rule governing short-term, limited-duration insurance that closes loopholes and protects people from misleading marketing tactics by requiring health insurers to be up front with consumers about coverage so they can better distinguish such plans from more comprehensive coverage.

My lateset for the AMA. Read the whole shebang.

The AMA is the physician’s relentless and powerful ally in health care, and unprecedented times require bold action. Physicians face far too many challenges that interfere with patient care.

That’s why the AMA is advocating to keep doctors at the head of the health care team, reform the Medicare physician payment system, relieve the burden of overused prior authorizations and so much more.

My latest for the AMA. Read the whole shebang.

The U.S. drug-overdose and death epidemic continues to kill more than 100,000 people a year and demands immediate and collective action.

“As a nation, we have to do better,” AMA President Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH, noted in a Leadership Viewpoints column last year. “As physicians, we must show the leadership necessary to make a difference.”

At the individual level, such leadership can include becoming familiar with evidence-based, practical insights to address the opioid-overdose epidemic. The AMA has created a seven-episode podcast series that serves up just that, with each episode being enduring material that is designated by the AMA for PRA Category 1 Credit.

My latest for the AMA. The whole shebang.

The time-wasting, care-delaying payer cost-control process known as prior authorization is the bane of physicians’ existence.

According to the most recent AMA survey (PDF) of 1,001 practicing physicians, 89% of respondents said prior authorization had a significant or somewhat negative clinical impact, with 33% reporting that prior authorization had led to a serious adverse event such as a death, hospitalization, disability or permanent bodily damage, or other life-threatening event for a patient in their care. …

As the physician’s powerful, relentless ally in health care, the AMA’s hard work to ease the burdens of prior authorization is starting to pay off. There is a long way to go yet, but below you will find some positive signs of progress in the AMA’s long-standing, focused effort to fix prior authorization.

My latest for the AMA. Read the whole shebang.

Telehealth use exploded to play an outsized role in helping patients safely access care when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit four years ago, but it is wrong to think of this form of digitally enabled care as a relic of 2020. Indeed, 74% of physicians work in practices that offer telehealth.

Rather, it seems as though every day offers more evidence of how telehealth can help improve access to care, save lives and advance the quality of care in a wide array of physician specialties and clinical conditions.

My latest for the AMA. The whole shebang.

The most widely circulated general medical journal in the world is launching a series on the health impact of climate change.

The series from JAMA “is intended to stimulate improved knowledge and understanding of the health effects of climate change to help foster commitment to timely action to prevent adverse health events from climate change,” says an introductory “JAMA Insights” article.

“Action and leadership should begin now to improve resilience in health systems and minimize the contribution of medical practice to climate change. Sustained and meaningful investment to reduce climate change and mitigate its effect on health are needed. Without this, adverse health consequences of climate change will continue to increase,” says the article, written by Kristie L. Ebi, PhD, and Jeremy J. Hess, MD, MPH, of the University of Washington Center for Health and Global Environment in Seattle. In addition to writing the first article in the series, Ebi and Dr. Hess will serve as guest editors to further develop it.

The JAMA series is part of a wider movement in medicine to understand climate change’s health impact and take action to address it.

My latest for the AMA. The whole shebang.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services today announced a program of accelerated payments to Medicare Part A providers and advance payments to Part B providers to help stem the immense financial fallout of the February cyberattack on the claims-processing systems of Change Healthcare, a subisidiary of UnitedHealth Group.

The move comes in the wake of forceful advocacy from the AMA calling for additional relief for physicians given the estimated $100 million daily impact of the outage on the health care industry.

My latest for the AMA. Read the whole shebang.