DJP Update 6-15-2010 Two articles about AMA Membership in “MedPage Now”
AMA: House of Medicine Shrinks Again
By Peggy Peck, Executive Editor, MedPage Today
Published: June 14, 2010
http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/AMA/20676
Excerpt from article (last 5 paragraphs) Mention of Dr. W. Jeff Terry and AMA Board Chair Dr. Rebecca Patchin
This year, the AMA reference committee, which sat through more than five hours of testimony about membership and other issues dealing with AMA governance, is recommending that the AMA’s policy-making House of Delegates require the AMA leadership to release annual reports that will include information about the “age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, life stage, present employment, and self-designated specialty” of its members.
But the reference committee is not asking the AMA to open its membership book by releasing year-to-date figures, which is what W. Jeff Terry, MD, a surgeon from Mobile, Ala., has pleaded with the AMA to do.
Terry, one of the delegates from Alabama, is likely to bring up the issue when the House votes on the membership recommendations Tuesday or Wednesday. He is ardent about membership, he explained, because Alabama is one of the two red states on Patchin’s map. It, and the other red state — Mississippi — are rumored to have lost as many as 40% of their AMA members.
Although Patchin did not signal any willingness to release year-to-date numbers (she would not, for example, allow the color-coded map to be distributed) she did say that the AMA is actively reevaluating its definition of membership.
For example, she said that in the current digital age a better approach to membership might be traffic, so if a physician accesses a certain number of AMA digital services — CME, electronic journals, practice management programs — that physician would automatically be considered a member.
(Bolding of last two paragraphs added by DJP; this should make for an interesting discussion in the House of Delegates!)
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AMA: Delegates Question AMA Role in Health Reform
By Peggy Peck, Executive Editor, MedPage Today
Published: June 11, 2010
http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/AMA/20628
EXCERPT from article:
Now a year later and with healthcare reform finally a reality, some of the AMA rank and file are crying foul.
For example, as the meeting opens here, Congress has still failed to “fix” Medicare’s sustainable growth rate formula and doctors are still faced with a 21% cut in reimbursement, despite promises from a Democratic president and Democratic congress to give them a permanent fix to the yearly Medicare pay follies.
On the eve of the meeting, Louisiana’s Donald J. Palmisano, MD, JD, a former AMA president, who has been vocal in his opposition to Obamacare, tried to rally the troops with an e-mail blast.
Noting that he had attended the AMA annual meeting since the mid 1980s and had spent nine years as a member of the AMA’s Board of Trustees, Palmisano wrote, “Of all of those years of attendance, it is my view that this AMA Annual Meeting has the potential to be the most important AMA meeting of my AMA career.”
The reason, he said, is that the association, in his opinion, has lost its bearings, and he has signaled that he plans to push for a course adjustment.
“Although the AMA in theory represents all physicians via the state medical and specialty medical associations seated in the House of Delegates, the current paying membership is probably 15 to 18% of physicians in USA,” he wrote.
“How sad,” Palmisano continued. “Certainly it is the responsibility of AMA leadership to give the House of Delegates the actual membership numbers at this meeting and not give the excuse that the books are not closed yet. How many dues paying members as of the end of 2009, and how many in 2010 have sent in their dues so far? And how many of those are reduced student and resident dues? My point is the membership continues to drop. I believe the majority of physicians in the USA are opposed to the position taken by the AMA on the enacted law for ‘health system reform.'”
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Stay well,
Donald
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