Keep ACR at the Table

Establishing policy: The AMA House of Delegates is the principal policy group of the AMA. The ACR currently has one delegate that votes on policy before the House of Delegates. The House of Delegates, composed of elected representatives from state and specialty societies across the United States, reviews hundreds of resolutions twice a year to determine which resolutions will become policies of the AMA. Policies that have been discussed recently include the flawed Sustainable Growth Rate formula, pay for performance, electronic medical records, obesity, and a universal health plan.

Allow the voice of rheumatologists to be heard at CPT, at RUC, on federal issues, on national issues, and with insurance issues that affect all physicians. It is easy to join the AMA. You can visit the AMA Web site at https://membership.ama-assn.org/JoinRenew, or call (800) 262-3211. If we do not increase the number of rheumatologists that belong to the AMA, the ACR will lose its voice in the AMA.

Join with me in having rheumatologists’ voices heard. Join the AMA.

Dr. Birnbaum is president of ACR. Contact him via e-mail at [email protected].

There is a saying that if the American Medical Association (AMA) did not exist, we would have to invent it. That is just what Dr. Nathan S. Davis did back in 1845 when he called for a national medical convention and laid the foundation for the establishment of the AMA in 1847. This new group would…

Some were furious. State by state, laws were enacted to ensure compliance. In most states, the laws were accompanied by a modest fine, as an added incentive. By the time the laws were written, most understood they were based on good science and common sense. The potential to save lives and prevent tragedy was finally…

Join the AMA. Don’t join because you agree with everything the AMA does. Join so we, as rheumatologists, will continue to have a voice and make a difference.

The American Medical Association consists of two key groups: 1) the Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC), which oversees the annual updates to the physician work relative values, and 2) the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) Editorial Panel, which assigns new or revised codes in the CPT book. The CPT Process Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) was…

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