Dr Barbara McAneny Highlights Work the AMA Is Doing to Build the Healthcare System of the Future

The American Medical Association (AMA) has 3 main strategic areas it is focusing on to help create the healthcare system of the future that is deserving of doctors’ work and patients’ respect, said Barbara L. McAneny, MD, president of the AMA.

Transcript

What are some of the big policy goals of the American Medical Association?

The AMA has 3 strategic areas that we focus in. One, I’ve talked about, which is improving the health of Americans, just improving health outcomes, working on diabetes and other chronic diseases like hypertension.

The second one is practice sustainability and physician satisfaction, which go together. And part of that is looking at the burnout issues that are happening. We’re very concerned about that.

Our third pillar is to advance medical education changes, because we want to have medical students and residents and fellows come out into practice ready and able to take care of patients in the 21st century. And there’s going to need to be some modifications in the education system.

In addition to those 3, we’re now confronting a huge opioid epidemic. That patients that we treat for cancers are cured of their cancer, and then die of opioid overdoses because they have the disease of addiction. So, we are working very hard with multiple entities to change addiction from being seen as a moral failing into being seen as a chronic, relapsing disease that requires ongoing, both medical and behavioral, healthcare for the rest of those patients lives.

So, we have a lot of work to do. It’s very rewarding to be able to see the changes that we’re beginning to make in all of those areas. There are a lot more changes to come, but I’m optimistic that the AMA is going to be able to help create the healthcare system of the future that is deserving of doctors’ work and patients’ respect so that we don’t have the burnout issue and we can deliver better healthcare to patients at a lower cost.