AMA House of Delegates helps cardiology groups influence healthcare policies
As healthcare policy continues to evolve, the American College of Cardiology (ACC) is playing a pivotal role in shaping national priorities through its ongoing collaboration with the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates (HOD). David E. Winchester, MD, MS, chair of the ACC Board of Governors, and an ACC delegate to the AMA, discussed the importance of these partnerships during in an interview with Cardiovascular Business at AMA's annual meeting.
Unlike traditional medical conferences that focus on clinical science or research, Winchester emphasized that the AMA meeting is a policy-driven forum that brings together more than 700 physicians from every state in the U.S.
"This meeting is all about policy and it's all about networking. It's about collaborating together as physicians to find the best policy solutions to what's going on in America. The House of Delegates has hundreds and hundreds of physicians in a very organized, deliberative, democratic fashion, deciding what AMA policy is going to be with representatives from every specialty society you can imagine," Winchester explained.
The "House of Cardiology" has 18 delegates in total. Groups with delegates include the ACC, American Society of Echocardiography (ASE), American Society of Nuclear Cardiology (ASNC), Heart Rhythm Society (HRS), Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI), Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR) and Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT). They often find common ground with groups representing radiology, vascular health, surgery and other specialties.
Winchester noted that the cardiology community benefits not only from these seats, but also through coordinated efforts with other cardiovascular and medical specialty societies.
Cross-specialty collaboration has become increasingly important as healthcare procedures often overlap in scope. Winchester pointed out that issues like outpatient catheter-based procedures can involve not just cardiology but also nephrology, vascular surgery and interventional radiology.
“There’s a lot of care that’s crossing from one specialty into another ... Here, we really do our best to come together as a House of Medicine. People are very collegial and here to work through things in a collaborative fashion," he said.
On broader healthcare policy issues, Winchester said the AMA HOD provides a unified platform for tackling universal physician concerns such as Medicare reimbursement, insurance claim denials and prior authorization.
"These sorts of things are important to everybody," he said. "So when we can put our heads together to develop a cogent policy that does as much as possible to help physicians and patients, that's a win for everybody."
How the AMA House of Delegates creates healthcare policy
The HOD is made up of larger medical societies and medical associations from each state and U.S. territory. The number of delegates from each group are assigned based on the number of members they also have signed up with the AMA. Each group can propose resolutions that the HOD considers at its annual meeting each June in Chicago. The agenda for the HOD averages more than 1,200 pages and includes new resolutions and AMA follow-up reports on requests for data for further policy discussion based on previous years' resolutions.
If adopted by the majority of the House of Medicine, these resolutions become the guiding policies for the AMA. In turn, the AMA uses these to make recommendations to regulatory agencies like the FDA and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and insurance payers, as well as advocacy efforts in both Congress and at the state level.
Dave Fornell has covered healthcare for more than 17 years, with a focus in cardiology and radiology. Fornell is a 5-time winner of a Jesse H. Neal Award, the most prestigious editorial honors in the field of specialized journalism. The wins included best technical content, best use of social media and best COVID-19 coverage. Fornell was also a three-time Neal finalist for best range of work by a single author. He produces more than 100 editorial videos each year, most of them interviews with key opinion leaders in medicine. He also writes technical articles, covers key trends, conducts video hospital site visits, and is very involved with social media. E-mail: [email protected]