Service on the AMA Board of Trustees . . . .

Since June 2014, I have served on the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association, as Chair of the Board in 2019-2020 and am now President. It is clear to me that the future is bright for physicians and patients in America … but we have major challenges that must be addressed to ensure our collective future. Some of the most important issues facing us today include:

  • Ensuring Digital Tools and AI work for patients and physicians – Too often technology had become more of a burden than an asset when deployed across health care setting. Many tools, inckluding electronic health records, have often failed to live up to their promise, and in many practices and hospitals poor usability has made care slower and more difficult to render. We must ensure that emerging digital technologies work for us, rather than against us and lead.
  • Fair Payment for Physician Services – Physicians, like all professionals deserve to be paid fairly for services and work provided. As a profession, we have made many sacrifices to ensure the health of our nation, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, but we cannot sustain a system in which expansion of medical services is based on the sole premise of cuts to physician reimbursement
  • Graduate Medical Education – Although medical school enrollment has risen over the last decade, the full time equivalent resident cap on fully funded residency positions established by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 has limited our ability to expand GME. We need to lift the Medicare cap on GME positions or explore alternative funding models, to have a meaningful impact on the issue of the impending physician shortage.
  • Professional Burnout – We continue to see record levels of burnout across all of the health professions, but most notably among physicians and nurses. The causes of this are multifactorial and require system-level solutions to address the underlying challenges of practicing in an increasingly consolidate and impersonal healthcare system.

Current Professional Memberships:

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  • American Medical Association
  • American Society of Anesthesiologists
  • Tennessee Medical Association
  • Wisconsin Medical Society
  • Massachusetts Medical Society
  • GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBTQ Equality
  • Association of Military Surgeons of the United States (AMSUS)
  • The AMA Anesthesiology Section Council
  • The AMA LGBTQ Health Section Council