A new advocacy organization is launching on April 28 to give “every physician” a voice in decisions that affect their professional lives. But this group doesn’t intend to use the top-down approach to decision making seen in many medical societies.
Paul Teirstein, MD, chief of cardiology for Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, Calif., and founder of the new organization United Physicians, said in an interviewit is a nonprofit group that will operate through online participation.
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Projects would need the support of a two-thirds majority of United Physicians’ members to proceed with any proposals. Meetings will be held publicly online, Dr. Teirstein explained.
There is a need for a broad-based organization that will respond to the voice of practicing physicians rather than dictate legislative priorities from management ranks, he said.
Dr. Teirstein said he learned how challenging it is to bring physicians together on issues in 2014 in his battles against changes in maintenance of certification rules. The result of his efforts was the National Board of Physicians and Surgeons (NBPAS), set up to provide a means of certification different from the one offered by the American Board of Internal Medicine.
Dr. Teirstein has argued that the approach of ABIM unfairly burdened physicians with a stepped-up schedule of testing and relied on an outdated approach to the practice of medicine.
Physicians busy with their practices feel they lack a unified voice in contesting the growing administrative burden and unproductive federal and state policies, Dr. Teirstein said.
He cited the limited enrollment in the largest physician groups as evidence of how disenfranchised many clinicians feel. There are about 1 million professional active physicians in the United States, according to the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. Yet, even the largest physician group, the American Medical Association, has about 250,000 members, according to its 2018 annual report
“Clearly, most physicians believe they have little voice when it comes to health care decisions,” Dr. Teirstein said. “Our physician associations are governed from the top down. The leaders set the agenda. There may be delegates, but does leadership really listen to the delegates? Do the delegates really listen to the physician community?”
On its website, AMA describes itself as “physicians’ powerful ally in patient care” that works with more than 190 state and specialty medical societies. In recent months, James L. Madara, MD, the group’s chief executive officer, has urged governors to remove obstacles for physicians who want to fill workforce gaps in COVID-19 hot spots, among other actions.
In its annual report, the AMA, which declined to comment for this article, said its membership rose by 3.4% in 2018, double the growth rate of the previous year, thanks to a membership drive.
“The campaign celebrates the powerful work of our physician members and showcases how their individual efforts – along with the AMA – are moving medicine forward,” wrote Dr. Madara and other organization leaders in the report.
What Dr. Teirstein proposes is an inversion of the structure used by other medical societies, in which he says leaders and delegates dictate priorities.
United Physicians will use meetings and votes held by members online to decide which projects to pursue. Fees would be kept nominal, likely about $10 a year, depending on the number of members. Fees would be subject to change on the basis of expenses. The AMA has a sliding fee schedule that tops out with annual dues for physicians in regular practice of $420.
“There are no delegates, no representatives, and no board of directors. We want every physician to join and every physician to vote on every issue,” Dr. Teirstein said.
He stressed that he sees United Physicians as being complementary to the AMA.
“We do not compete with other organizations. Ideally, other organizations will use the platform,” Dr. Teirstein said. “If the AMA is considering a new policy, it can use the United Physicians platform to measure physician support. For example, through online discussions, petitions, and voting, it might learn a proposed policy needs a few tweaks to be accepted by most physicians.”