AMA’s vigor, vision spread across all areas of medicine: AMA CEO … – American Medical Association (blog)

The AMA, founded 170 years ago, is not showing its age as it moves energetically to develop critical resources and policies for medicine, guide lifelong professional development and physician growth, improve the nations health and marshal changes that touch virtually every corner of the country, the Associations Executive Vice President and CEO James L. Madara, MD, said during Saturdays opening session of the 2017 AMA Annual Meeting.

The Associations three major initiativesto improve professional satisfaction and practice sustainability, create the medical school of the future and improve health outcomes for patients with prediabetes and hypertensionhave gained traction and national attention, Dr. Madara said. They also have begun to interconnect and broaden, incorporating critical advocacy work and organically linking to other initiatives.

In the area of professional satisfaction, initial work on the STEPS Forward collection of practice-improvement modules has expanded to the MACRA Action Kit, the Payment Model Evaluator, and the organizations ongoing efforts to expand the innovation ecosystem and take a leadership role in digital medicine.

Creating tools and policies to promote satisfaction also extends to our recent work defining principles for better electronic health record usability, Dr. Madara said, adding that efforts in this area also created the principles to reform prior authorizationprinciples that are now supported by more than 100 organizations and are aimed at correcting deep flaws in prior authorization.

The AMAs focus on physician development and growth began with encouraging medical education innovation and now extends to the redesign of our Education Center, our initiatives to combat physician burnout, and of course to the JAMA Network, he said.

When it comes to improving health outcomes, an effort that first saw partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has expanded to include work with other organization leaders such as the American Heart Association to help change patient behavior by integrating prevention into care settings in a way that does not further burden practicing physicians. In this area too, the scope has widened to include vital roles in advancing personalized medicine and health equity while reducing the opioid epidemic.

Conceiving of the Associations essential work in this way tells a more complete story of the AMAand that is a story of leadership, Dr. Madara said. And it is leadership that spreads far, deep and wide, extending to:

Before concluding, Dr. Madara touched on something really big and incredibly, incredibly importantthe Associations leadership effort on health-system reform.

The AMAs aim, he said, is to ensure that the 20 million-plus Americans who have gained insurance coverage in recent years do not lose it and to encourage lawmakers to view health care from the shoes of the patient, to encourage them, as our campaign states, to put patients before politics.

The AMA is working broadly with others to promote a comprehensive vision for health reform that seeks to expand affordable and meaningful coverage, protect funding for safety-net programs, strengthens the individual insurance market and creates cost transparency, he said.

We all have to acknowledge the challenging political environment were working in. We are truly in unchartered waters, Dr. Madara added. Yet, we will push forward with mission, advocacy and leadership three words that have defined the AMA over these last 170 years.

Read more news coverage from the 2017 AMA Annual Meeting.