Letter from the Executive Vice President
Dear Colleagues,
We are facing a critical time in our high risk, high reward profession of medicine, both rife with promise for better times ahead and with opportunities and challenges along the way. ACP will continue to lead the way for internal medicine to become a place where the voices of physicians and patients drown out the sound of EHR clicks and the shuffling of meaningless paperwork.
ACP is striving to change burdensome systems and requirements so that our members can refocus on the core elements of why we chose internal medicine as a profession: caring for patients and developing relationships. From the development of educational resources to partnering with like-minded stakeholders to help strengthen our positions, we are committed to doing whatever we can to help physicians get back to the bedside and reinstill the sense of community in healthcare and value the power of human connection. Relationships matter, and no relationship matters more than the one between patients and physicians.
ACP's work over the last year has remained mission-centric, focused on our commitment to the profession of internal medicine and to supporting our internist members and their patients. We've been working to make strides to get back to the meaning of medicine by reducing administrative burdens and focusing on prioritizing the patient-physician relationship, and we are working to uphold the guiding principle of "first, do no harm" by shielding patients from healthcare bills that are not in their best interest.
ACP has placed a priority this year on helping members with practice transformation, developing evidence-based clinical guidelines, encouraging stakeholders to revisit performance measurement, and advocating for reforms to the payment system that recognize the time and effort that go into caring, communicating, and coordinating care for our increasingly complex and aged patients. Like many of you, in my continuing role of seeing patients on the front lines of primary care, I understand the complexities of front-line patient care and the impact on the sick and vulnerable populations.
ACP supports the transformation to a sensible value-based system that improves patient care while minimizing administrative burdens, maximizes face time with patients, and appropriately rewards complex care management and cognitive services. ACP has created tools and resources to help members transition to new systems and methods. We have engaged with health care stakeholders, such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and other payers, to offer suggested improvements to the bipartisan Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), which replaced the Sustainable Growth rate formula that ACP opposed for many years, and toward the shared goal of improving current payment and delivery systems. ACP has been a leading voice for physicians in these efforts and has seen many of our recommendations adopted.
We have been steadfast in our efforts to stave off the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act without an alternative that protects patients, especially the most vulnerable, despite the ongoing battle for healthcare in the U.S. We have continued to advocate strongly for meaningful changes in professional development, such as maintenance of certification, that are grounded in an adult learning educational platform that is relevant, practical, non-burdensome, and seamlessly woven into the activities that physicians engage in to bring their best to patient care on a daily basis.
We've used our collective voice to weigh in on issues like the escalating costs of prescription drugs, the opioid epidemic, and skyrocketing out-of-pocket healthcare expenses, which result in devastating effects on our patients and burden for our physicians. As internists comprise the largest proportion of practicing physicians in the U.S. at 25%, we have supported efforts to ensure that there is an adequate and well-trained workforce in internal medicine so that the profession remains strong and our patients can benefit from our specialty. We've demonstrated our conviction to address issues like immigration, where we stand against the discrimination of medical residents based on their country of origin, in the interest of protecting the practice of medicine and medical education in the U.S. ACP is on record on issues such as medical liability and seeking to protect our profession from litigation. ACP lobbied successfully against health insurance mergers which create higher prices and less competition, ultimately hurting patients.
Our Medical Knowledge Self-Assessment Program—MKSAP—celebrated 50 years of medical education and excellence this year. Likewise, this year Annals of Internal Medicine celebrates 90 years of publishing a clinically relevant, top-caliber peer-reviewed journal and also debuted a new website. ACP produced award-winning publications and saw robust attendance at both our annual meeting and Leadership Day. We continue to set the standards for guideline and policy development, lead in the areas of High Value Care and efforts to reduce wasteful practices that add little value and increase healthcare spending, and work closely with the international internal medicine community.
I encourage you to read through the report that follows, visit our website, get involved with your local chapter, join the conversations on social media and use your voice to change our healthcare system for the better. Your voice, your skills, and your experiences are the fabric that weaves the greater quilt of community that we all need to share to face the times ahead—for ourselves, our patients and our profession.Sincerely,
Darilyn V. Moyer, MD, FACP
Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer
dmoyer@acponline.org
A Snapshot of ACP Members
Source: 2016 ACP Member survey
