• Issue dates
• Regions
• Health plans
• Sections
• News briefs
• Columns
• Editorials
• Letters

The specifics of how the American Medical Association carries out its 2010 Strategic Plan, the to-do list for the year ahead, may well be affected by the progress of health system reform in Washington. But the principles at the core of the plan both encompass and transcend the current reform debate.

As AMA Executive Vice President and CEO Michael Maves, MD, MBA, told the Association's House of Delegates at its Interim Meeting in November, the "critical juncture at which we stand" is not just about what is happening right now in Washington. The AMA's Strategic Plan for 2010, approved by the AMA house, spells out principles that Dr. Maves called "a broad view of what's good for medicine, for physicians and for your patients."

The plan identifies five core commitments:

Access to care: The Association has long sought to expand access through its Voice of the Uninsured campaign and other initiatives, including ways to address physician shortages. Any federal legislation that passes likely will include some expansion of health insurance coverage, so specific strategies would build upon those details. The Strategic Plan calls for the AMA to work within organized medicine and to build coalitions with patients and employers. It also calls for developing a national physician work force strategy.

Quality of care: The AMA will maintain its focus on systems that improve quality through effective and efficient measures, definitions and reports. Among the strategies is an expansion of measures under the AMA-convened Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement, as well as integration of those measures into practices. The AMA will advance the use of health information technology through solutions that assist in quality improvement and informed decision-making.

Cost of care: Addressing the doctor's role relating to cost and value in health care spending is an important task for next year. The AMA plan calls for progress in this area while keeping third parties, such as insurance companies and government, from interfering in the physician-patient relationship. The AMA pledged that its efforts on the physician's role in cost will not detract from the Association's ongoing actions to address medical liability, insurance company bureaucracy and other contributors to the rising cost of care.

Prevention and wellness: The Association will use its voice -- and work with other medical societies -- to help educate physicians and seek legislative support in the areas of improving public health and reducing overall costs through prevention and wellness. Part of that work is identifying strategies that can influence healthier patient behaviors, encourage preventive interventions and enable the effective treatment of chronic conditions -- all at an appropriate cost and with a fair payment to the physician.

Payment models: Specific opportunities and challenges to reshape the payment system will be defined in large part by what happens with health system reform, although the effort to repeal the sustainable growth rate formula and replace it with one that more closely aligns rates with physician costs is an ongoing struggle. The plan also calls for the AMA to develop and disseminate tools that doctors can use to help themselves adapt as payers adopt any payment policy changes.

As Dr. Maves described it, health system reform is "only the latest battle, not the last battle." The AMA's Strategic Plan is designed so that no matter what happens in Washington, D.C., the physician's voice will be heard on the most important issues affecting doctors and their patients.

The print version of this content appeared in the Dec 14, 2009 issue of American Medical News.

Back to top