Your patients and you: an advocacy grand slam
Mike Abrams, Executive Vice President of the Iowa Medical Society
Physicians are in an enviable position: in the course of advocating for your best interest, you are advocating for your patients. It applies in all cases: tort reform is pro-patient. Medicare and Medicaid reform are pro-patient. Your scope of practice positions are pro-patient.
But we need to do a better job of engaging our patients in the important health issues confronting them (therefore, you) in the political arena. The American Medical Association is doing just that. Working from lists they constructed from patient advocacy groups, they have built an AMA Patient Action Network. Those non-physicians get e-mail alerts and AMA facilitates their contacts to federal legislators.
Do they respond? Let’s look at the numbers. The AMA tracks every contact through their grassroots network. I understand that this leaves out every contact that is made through other channels, but it is interesting nonetheless.
In the most recent Medicare campaign, Iowa patients sent 2,317 contacts to our federal legislators (all five Congressmen and both U.S. Senators), and Iowa physicians sent 425. Now I know physicians contacted legislators outside the AMA system, but that is a pretty interesting number.
The bottom line: it is OK for you to talk about these issues with your patients! In fact, many of them want to hear from you on the issues that matter to you, whether it’s a public health issue, socioeconomic issue, or some other health policy confronting your community.