This is my first Viewpoints post as AMA president and I want you to know how important it is to me that I engage with you—my colleagues all over the country—as we face the challenges of providing high-quality care in an increasingly burdensome environment.
I am a student of the Classics and frequently turn to them for their timeless insight into human behavior. In my inaugural address, I drew on the great orator Cicero who said, “We were born to unite with our fellow men, and to join in community with the human race.”
That is my goal for the upcoming year: To join with you, to toil alongside you, on behalf of this nation’s physicians and patients.
As an emergency physician, I am fortunate to witness amazing moments with my patients—priceless experiences that have left indelible impressions on me as I know you, too, have had with your own patients. These moments are the reason we went to medical school, and they inspire us to do our best every day despite the challenges we face.
Those challenges, the daily trials we face navigating the health system, all too often overshadow the joys of medicine. That simply has to change, and I am committed to working with you through the AMA to ease these burdens wherever possible and to restore some of the lost joy to the practice of medicine.
Here are just a few of the important issues we will tackle this year to make it easier for physicians to enjoy the life-changing moments of medicine:
- Increasing physician satisfaction and practice sustainability. We’ve just launched our STEPS Forward website, a fantastic free resource developed for physicians by physicians. The modules on STEPS Forward offer proven ways to make your practice more efficient so you can devote more time to patient care. We have a lot more exciting things to come this year from this AMA focus area, and I look forward to sharing them with you in the months ahead. We also are awarding $10,000 for solutions to clinical challenges—I hope you'll submit your ideas and be a part of this effort to make things better for all of us.
- Unraveling the web of regulatory requirements we face each day. The repeal of the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula brought with it a new merit-based incentive payment system (often referred to as “MIPS”). The current web of financial penalties under the Physician Quality Reporting System, electronic health record (EHR) meaningful use and the value-based payment modifier will expire at the end of 2018 and will be replaced by the MIPS. We will be working to ensure that its effect on physicians is positive, both in the short- and long-term.
- Improving EHR systems. We all know that the current state of EHRs is intolerable. Current EHRs routinely turn us into typists, degrade our efficiency, interfere with effective communication and crowd out quality time spent with our patients. We’re hard at work on all levels to increase interoperability, improve usability and make sure physicians have a voice in the future of these systems.
These all are big issues and they require big solutions. I need your help. Every one of us has a part to play. Each one of us has something to contribute that another cannot. When it comes to something as important as shaping a better, healthier future, it will take every single one of us.
When I stood in the ballroom during the 2015 AMA Annual Meeting earlier this month and delivered my inaugural address, I was inspired by what I saw. A room full of students and physicians, our peers, who came together to overcome challenges and to enjoy the friendship and camaraderie that is the special joy of this profession.
We’ll do it together, but I need your help. Please share your thoughts with me in the comment section below. This is an important conversation and I look forward to learning from you in the year ahead.
