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The AMA, along with 103 state medical societies and national specialty organizations, wrote to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma to express concerns about the broad scope and far reaching implications of CMS' request for feedback on scope of practice. In reviewing recommendations to weaken or eliminate Medicare regulations requiring physician supervision of nonphysician professionals, the physician organizations strongly urged the administration to consider the vast difference in education and training of physicians and other health care professionals. As the most highly educated and trained health care professionals, physicians should lead the health care team. Patients agree and overwhelmingly want physicians leading their health care teams. In addition, the organizations provided evidence countering common arguments in favor of expanding the scope of practice for nonphysician professionals and urged caution against positioning scope of practice as an administrative burden. Doing so obfuscates the very real administrative burdens facing physicians and other health care professionals every day.
