The two largest primary-care physician organizations support the U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but I know better than to make a blanket statement such as "primary-care doctors cheer decision" even though many apparently do.
The American College of Physicians, with 132,000 internal-medicine physician and student members, is the second-largest physician association and the largest medical specialty society. It doesn't hold back on its assessment of Chief Justice John Roberts' handiwork.
"Every American will benefit from Supreme Court's decision to uphold the health reform law," reads the headline over its news release.
"While the individual mandate and its impact on access to care were the main focus of this court case, the ACA is about so much more than the mandate," said Dr. David Bronson, the ACP's president, in the release.
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Among my random observations from the recently concluded annual meeting of the American Medical Association House of Delegates was that there was at least one fewer mustache and one fewer bowtie this year.
Dr. Richard Frankenstein, former California Medical Association president, was sporting a new clean-shaven look. But when I noticed this one of us was on an escalator and the other on the stairs, so there wasn't an opportunity to inquire about the fashion statement.
Frankenstein was an unsuccessful 2010 AMA Board of Trustees candidate, and 2010 was the last year the AMA had a contested election for the office of president-elect. It should be different in 2013, as trustees Dr. Joseph Annis, an anesthesiologist from Austin, Texas and Dr. Robert Wah, chief medical officer with Computer Sciences Corp, Falls Church, Va., have already announced their candidacies for the post. Wah finished 10th on this year's Modern Physician/Modern Healthcare 50 Most Influential Physician Executives list.
One thing that happens during every annual meeting is that downtown Chicago's population of bow-tie wearers spikes noticeably. This year, however, the group by was down by at least one, as Dr. Joseph Bailey Jr., perhaps the House of Delegates' dean of Southern gentlemen, did not attend.
In an e-mail, Medical Association of Georgia spokesman Tom Kornegay said Bailey had to attend to a personal matter. Kornegay added that no one in the MAG office could determine the last time Bailey didn't attend the annual meeting.
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Dr. Jeremy Lazarus, the American Medical Association's new and 167th president, graduated from Chicago's Senn High School (class of '61), named after Nicholas Senn, the AMA's 49th president.
It's believed to be the first time that something like this has occurred.
Lazarus mentioned this coincidence in his inaugural address and stated that "say what you will about foreshadowing or fate," it was probably best that he didn't go to Michael Jordan Prep or Mike Ditka Magnet School.
Located in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood on the city's North Side, Senn is mostly known for having a large and diverse immigrant population. Its website notes that it was once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "Most Diverse School in the United States."
The website also notes that, out of 1,067 students, 415 were born outside the U.S. and 663 speak one of 44 languages other than English at home.
Some of these students are pictured on a slideshow on the school's home page, including a boy from Nepal who wants to be a neurosurgeon, another from Vietnam who wants to study medicine, a girl from Guinea who want to be a doctor and girl from Peru would like to work with Doctors Without Borders.
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Reporters think they have it tough, but—during the annual American Medical Association House of Delegates meeting in Chicago—it's the AMA staff that must get the most done in very little time. And sometimes, apparently, sleep deprivation can make things can go from bad to verse.
Such was the case this week with good ol' Reference Committee C (PDF), which is tasked with processing reports and resolutions having to do with medical education—including its endless string of acronyms for continuing medical education (aka CME) offshoots. Commonly repeated terms in this year's meeting have included maintenance of certification (MOC), osteopathic continuous certification (OCC), and maintenance of licensure (MOL).
This year, the panel also addressed plenty of graduate medical education (GME) issues, such as resident work hours and resident "moonlighting" at other jobs in their off-hours (to help pay off those med school debts, you know). Every year, there are some folks who believe that med students and residents aren't learning enough about the topics that interest them, so this year there were calls to add lessons on pain, organ donation, autopsies, patient safety and more.
I could go on, but the agenda was cleverly summarized by Dr. J. Mack Worthington, professor, chair and clerkship director for the family medicine program at the University of Tennessee (Chattanooga) College of Medicine.
Worthington, who served as chairman of Reference Committee C, closed the committee's proceedings at the meeting by reading a poem written by Fred Lenhoff, one of the AMA staffers assigned to the panel.
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Being a voting member of the American Medical Association House of Delegates means being part of an exclusive club—but apparently it doesn't mean you always feel like voting.
Minutes after the Society of Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions was admitted into the House of Delegates at the delegates' annual meeting this week in Chicago, House Speaker Dr. Andrew Gurman of Pennsylvania instructed the group's lone delegate, Dr. Joe Babb of North Carolina, to go to registration and pick up his credentials.
He was also told to sit where there was an electronic vote "clicker" waiting for him.
According to an AMA Board of Trustees report, Babb's group was founded in 1978 and has 2,185 members, 562 of whom are AMA members (25.7%). And the AMA may need to add more new member groups as its meeting goes on if Monday's lethargic-voting trend continues.
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How would you spend a beautiful sunny Sunday in Chicago?
Except for a 90-minute lunch break, physicians with the American Medical Association House of Delegates kept themselves inside windowless hotel meeting rooms from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and some of them appeared to be enjoying it. That's even if the Beers Criteria they discussed were related to punitive insurance policies and had nothing at all to do with cold beverages served in frosty mugs.
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A friendly reminder to those tweeting from the American Medical Association meeting: Unless you like reading notes about Taylor Swift with your Medicare premium support diatribes, the code #AMA is useless.
The preferred hashtag appears to be #AMAmtg.
In fact, very little that is found while searching with #AMA will get you anything about the nation's oldest and largest physician organization. But you will find comments about the American Music Awards, American Motorcycle Association, American Freestyle Motocross Association, American Marketing Association and a lot of stuff in Spanish that I can't figure out.
But, speaking about premium support, I e-mailed former Medical Group Management Association President and CEO Dr. William Jessee for his take on the debate over whether the AMA should endorse transitioning Medicare into such a system.
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Nobel prizes probably won't be handed out, but peace has been declared between the American College of Chest Physicians and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, and patients might be declared the conflict's winners.
"The guideline wars are over," trumpets the headline of an editorial written by Dr. Jay Lieberman, chairman of the University of Connecticut orthopedic surgery department and appearing in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
Can it be true?
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Whereas terms such as "reimbursement" instead of "payment" and "provider" instead of "physician" really get on some doctors' nerves, the 22,000-member Maryland State Medical Society has resolved to do something about it.
It has introduced a resolution to be debated at the upcoming American Medical Association House of Delegates meeting taking place June 16-20 in Chicago. The resolution would make it AMA policy that the word “payment” be used instead of “reimbursement” in “all communications that relate to financial transactions between physicians and third-party payers.”
The resolution defines reimbursement as “a repayment for expense or loss incurred,” and payment as “the provision of a certain amount of money in exchange for services rendered.” And it notes that payment is a more accurate description because “the physician has not incurred an expense or loss to the third-party payer that would qualify for a 'reimbursement.'”
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There's no way physicians can keep up with all the medical information available on the Internet, and there's no way that they will be as motivated as cancer patients to read as much of it as possible. It isn't a sign of failure or weakness to accept these realities.
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There's no way physicians can keep up with all the medical information available on the Internet, and there's no way that they will be as motivated as cancer patients to read as much of it as possible. It isn't a sign of failure or weakness to accept these realities.
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