At the American Medical Association (AMA), we have long believed in the power of speaking with one voice. Whether it is physicians rallying together to fight for medical liability reform, medical students collaborating on a public health campaign or lobbyists gathering on Capitol Hill, a unified message always speaks volumes more than a lone cry for change.

While AMA has consistently been acknowledged as one of the country’s most powerful public policy organizations, its influence is in large part dependent on the support of specialty societies such as ASA. Strengthened by the voice and advocacy efforts of your association, together we have achieved a number of significant victories. In 2004 we won approximately $93 million more in reimbursements for anesthesiologists under the recent Medicare update. We have defended scope-of-practice issues concerning nonphysician providers and have supported state-level issues such as office-based surgery standards and licensure of anesthesiologist assistants. Just last year, we formally adopted 10 fundamental patient safety principles that should govern physicians performing office-based surgery utilizing moderate sedation/analgesia, deep sedation/analgesia or general anesthesia. ASA was instrumental in the drafting of these principles. (These core principles can be found at <www.ASAhq.org/Washington/AMACorePrinciples.pdf>).

As the only professional organization dedicated to representing all of our nation’s physicians, AMA’s agenda is indeed broad. Make no mistake, though, the issues we address and the advocacy efforts we champion are ones that affect anesthesiologists directly. AMA advocacy efforts afford ASA at least a half-million dollars in value every year.

We bring your viewpoints to influential policy-making and program development organizations, including the Council on Medical Education, Council on Scientific Affairs, the AMA Political Action Committee, the AMA Board of Trustees and more.

Our AMA House of Delegates provides specialty societies with a democratic forum to debate important issues facing our profession and to develop policies for addressing them. You and your fellow anesthesiologists, along with the more than 100 other national medical specialty societies now represented in the AMA House of Delegates, are shaping the issues that affect our nation’s “Federation of Medicine”; for if the AMA is the fortress of organized medicine, our specialty and state societies are the drawbridges across which all communication and ideas flow.

In the May 2001 ASA NEWSLETTER, Richard R. Johnston, M.D., Chair of the ASA Committee on Representation to the American Medical Association, posed the following question to readers: “Do we need AMA?” The answer, he said, was “definitely.” Besides our involvement with medical education, ethics and standards and our publications, Dr. Johnston said, AMA represents anesthesiologists at the national level and in Washington, D.C. “It is shortsighted to think that we, ASA, can individually promote the medical interests of anesthesiologists and the patients we care for without the help of AMA,” Dr. Johnston wrote, “We need AMA.”

AMA needs ASA just as much. At the end of the day, AMA’s presence in Washington draws strength from our individual, specialty and state society members. You are on the front lines, working with patients, keeping close tabs on the health care climate in our nation. Securing medical liability reform and other needed changes to improve our health care system and medical practice in this country will not be easy, but we must remain resolute. We must join together to present a unified front and show lawmakers that U.S. physicians will not be ignored. We must educate lawmakers about the dire consequences of ignoring the important health care issues facing all Americans. For our practices and for our patients, our voice must be heard.

In a recent conversation, ASA member and AMA Trustee Rebecca J. Patchin, M.D., an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist in Riverside, California, said that “together we can do much more than what any of us can do alone.” In addition to Medicare fixes and the resulting reimbursement increase, Dr. Patchin cited ASA’s involvement in developing the aforementioned AMA policy on office-based surgery.

Another example of the strength of AMA-ASA partnerships can be found in the AMA’s Council on Scientific Affairs or Council on Medical Service Reports, Dr. Patchin said. “Many of these reports would be extremely costly for anesthesiology to develop on its own. When a report comes from AMA, it gets a broader representation than if it were just a single specialty issue.”

Members of ASA, we need you to help us determine the direction of medicine. As a member of AMA, you can help anesthesiologists maintain a valuable political presence in this national unifying organization. Help us to achieve the reforms so essential to our profession.

AMA is your voice in Washington, and with your continued support, that voice can be heard louder, clearer and stronger than ever. Help us in our efforts to achieve unity within medicine. Together we are shaping the face of health care and promoting the art and science of medicine.

John C. Nelson, M.D., is an obstetrician-gynecologist at LDS Hospital, Salt Lake City, Utah.