Navigating the healthcare system is a challenge for many patients, and one reason is the system’s persistent use of confusing terminology around who is a physician. At its Annual Meeting in Chicago this week, the House of Delegates (HOD) acted to eliminate this confusion—and thereby boost patient safety—by deliberately avoiding use of the term “provider” when referring to any clinician with a medical degree.
The AMA already had policy stating that it supports requiring healthcare entities, when using the term “provider” in contracts, advertising and other communications, to specify the type of clinician being referred to by using the clinician’s recognized title, which details their education, training, license status and other recognized qualifications. The policy also supports this concept in state and federal health system reform.
With its latest action, the AMA adopted new policy to “oppose the use of the term ‘provider’ when used to include physicians.”
Delegates at the 2026 AMA Annual Meeting also moved to advance its protection of the patient-physician relationship by directing the AMA to “take further advocacy actions to implement Policy H-405.968, which prioritizes the use of the term ‘physician’ when discussing those with an MD or DO.”
The AMA, says the resolution that was adopted, “believes that the use of the term ‘provider’ when used to include physicians negatively impacts patient education and awareness, transparency and the ethical responsibilities of physicians to patient safety and professionalism.”
The AMA also will “refer the issue of ‘Physicians are not Providers’ for possible consideration by the AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs.”
This and several other actions taken at the Annual Meeting will strengthen the AMA’s efforts to fight scope creep defend the practice of medicine against scope of practice expansions that threaten patient safety and undermine physician-led, team-based care.
The AMA Scope of Practice Partnership has handed out nearly $6 million in grants since its inception, and that effort has been stepped up, with AMA Board Chair David H. Aizuss, MD, announcing in January that the AMA will commit $1 million annually to the partnership.
Support evaluation of unsupervised nurse practitioners
More than half of U.S. states permit unsupervised practice of medicine by nurse practitioners (NPs). Some states, in fact, have allowed it for decades.
What’s worrying about this is that “many scope-of-practice expansions have occurred without prospective, randomized or methodologically rigorous comparative studies evaluating patient outcomes when physician supervision is removed,” says a resolution introduced at the Annual Meeting.
Moreover, “existing studies frequently cited in support of expanded scope of practice often examine care delivered within physician-led teams, protocol-based environments or limited patient populations, rather than independent clinical decision-making,” the resolution notes. It adds that “objective, high-quality evidence is essential to inform legislators, regulators, physicians and patients regarding the safety, quality and appropriate role of unsupervised NP practice.”
For example, nurse practitioners delivering emergency care without physician supervision or collaboration in the Veterans Health Administration increase lengths of stay by 11% and raise 30-day preventable hospitalizations by 20% compared with emergency physicians. Those findings were included in a study published online ahead of print in the American Economic Review, which is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious—and influential—peer-reviewed journals in the profession of economics.
To bolster patient safety and add to the science on appropriate use of nurse practitioners, delegates directed the AMA to “fund independent, academically rigorous studies performing comparative effective analyses of patient outcomes between autonomous nonphysician practitioners and physician-led (MD/DO or foreign equivalent) care models—including measures of patient safety, quality, utilization, access, cost and health outcomes—with a goal of publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals.”
Visit AMA Advocacy in Action to find out what’s at stake in fighting scope creep and other advocacy priorities the AMA is actively working on, and learn more with the AMA about what sets apart physicians and nonphysicians.
Protect doctors’ prescriptive authority
Pharmacists play essential roles on physician-led care teams, particularly in ensuring medication safety. But problems can arise when pharmacists refuse to dispense prescriptions based on judgments that are outside of their education and training. These refusals can contribute to a variety of patient harms, including uncontrolled symptoms, relapses or even debilitation.
Added to that, corporate policies and pharmacy benefit management company requirements sometimes compel pharmacists to refuse to fill legitimate prescriptions, effectively overriding their individual professional judgment.
“This issue has been particularly nettlesome with respect to filling and dispensing prescriptions for opioid analgesics,” says an AMA Board of Trustees report whose recommendations were adopted at the Annual Meeting.
Existing AMA policy seeks to preserve patients’ ability to have legally valid prescriptions filled, including by directing the Association to “study the national prevalence and patterns of pharmacists refusing to fill valid prescriptions from plenary licensed physicians, including impact on patient outcomes and prescriber autonomy.”
But the Board of Trustees sought ways to engage with physicians’ pharmacy colleagues to explore additional ways to address these issues.
To that end, delegates directed the AMA to:
- Convene a meeting with the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy and other national pharmacy organizations to identify ways to improve communications between physicians and pharmacists about physicians’ and pharmacists’ corresponding responsibility and related areas, with report back at the 2027 AMA Annual Meeting.
- Work with pharmacies subject to the national opioid litigation settlements to provide data on refusals to fill and dispense medications, including the reasons for such refusals.
Read about the other highlights from the 2026 AMA Interim Meeting.
