the last piece to come up. The house re- jected opposition from the Georgia del- egation and adopted the Texas proposal verbatim.
Spotlight on PPACA The ongoing battle over AMA’s support of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) took a different turn at this year’s meeting. It began with Florida’s demand for
AMA to develop a clear policy statement on the association’s position on critical aspects of PPACA. These include oppos- ing pay-for-performance programs, sup- porting private contracting and medical savings accounts, and supporting steps to reduce health care costs. Florida phy- sicians also called on AMA to “imme- diately direct sufficient funds toward a multi-pronged campaign to accomplish these goals” and for AMA to renounce its support of PPACA if Congress doesn’t follow suit. The reference committee that heard
the proposal recommended that it not be adopted, especially the final segment. “In the current political environment, asking our AMA to withdraw its support from the law in its entirety could further discourage the Congress from repeal- ing specific problematic provisions of the [PP]ACA,” the committee members wrote.
House members agreed with that
argument but were not willing to aban- don the entire resolution. Delegates eas- ily resurrected the call for a clear AMA
policy statement. Then, on a 220-219 vote, they saved the funds for the multi- pronged campaign. That debate cleared the way for the
Texas resolution calling for transparency in the AMA’s position on PPACA. Dele- gates unanimously adopted the proposal for AMA to provide more detail on its positions of various pieces of PPACA and for the AMA Board of Trustees to issue a report by November that focuses spe- cifically on the budgetary, coverage, and physician-practice impacts of the law.
Texans in action Delegates once again enthusiastically re- elected former TMA President Sue Rudd Bailey, MD, as vice speaker of the AMA house. Three Texas medical students won
positions on the Region 3 Board for the AMA Medical Student Section. Kaitlin Janning, the new Region 3 secretary, and Elizabeth Coffee, the membership chair, are both students at Texas A&M University College of Medicine. Divya Chhabra, the new community service chair, attends The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. All three are rising second-year students. Austin anesthesiologist Joe Annis,
MD, engaged in a well-run campaign for AMA president-elect, losing by a very close margin to Robert Wah, MD, an obstetrician-gynecologist from Maryland. All of the Texas resolutions were well received. The delegates:
• Agreed with the plan to simplify — and remove potential legal landmines from — the Medicare opt-out process;
• Approved the Texas recommendation that the Bridges to Excellence pro- gram should align the time periods of its recognition program with those of the National Committee on Quality Assurance recognition programs;
• Asked for more study on initiatives promoting open access to scientific literature; and
• Called for further research into what vendors and government agencies need to do to make it easier for phy- sicians to transfer data from one electronic medical record system to another.
Three Texas physicians served on
House of Delegates reference commit- tees, which take testimony on all reports and resolutions and then make recom- mendations for the full house to con- sider. Mansfield neurologist Will Bradley, MD, chaired the Reference Committee on AMA Constitution and Bylaws. For- mer TMA Council on Legislation Chair Les Secrest, MD, of Dallas, sat on the Reference Committee on Legislation. Da- vid Lichtman, MD, of Fort Worth, served on the Reference Committee on Medical Education.
Other issues merit action Delegates addressed various other eco- nomic, legislative, and organizational topics. The house:
• Welcomed Ardis Dee Hoven, MD, an internal medicine and infectious dis- ease specialist in Lexington, Ky., as the AMA’s 168th president.
Newsmakers
Texas Health and Human Services Commissioner Kyle Janek, MD, received the 16th annual Bob Bullock Award for Outstand- ing Public Stewardship at the GTC Southwest 2013 conference. The award honors a Texas state executive or elected official for outstanding leadership, innovation, and dedication to serving the people during his or her public-sector career.
10 TEXAS MEDICINE August 2013
• Said AMA should study how main- tenance of certification and mainte- nance of licensure requirements affect physicians’ practices and to look for alternative to the exams.
• Voted to oppose the criminalization of “good-faith errors in medical judg- ment and medical recordkeeping” and for eliminating the Recovery Audit Contractor system.
• Directed AMA to support federal leg- islation that would stop the manda- tory implementation of the ICD-10
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