AMS launches ‘Your Care is at Our Core’ campaign. Kudos.

Physicians are our patients’ biggest allies. Our commitment to connecting and caring for patients pushed us through medical school, which didn’t come cheap. Yet, today, our core mission is disrupted by the ever-present demands of paperwork and regulatory metrics.

When I retired from family medicine in 2013, the bureaucracy had long since begun. But I recall a time when general practitioners were pillars of their communities, the glue that held them together. They were well compensated for their work – not always in money – and the ties between physicians and patients (and extending to patients’ families) were unbreakable.

I’ve watched that ideal change over the years, despite efforts to the contrary. While private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act have expanded access for previously marginalized populations, each patient encounter – indeed, every second of the working day – has been reduced to items on a ledger sheet. This monetization of patient care interferes with the critical physician-patient bond, particularly for family doctors.

A good part of the dissatisfaction – both from the physician and the patient standpoint – stems from this issue. That’s why I applaud the Arkansas Medical Society – where I’m a 48-year member – for its recent launching of the Your Care is at Our Core campaign. The campaign, consisting of repeated social media posts, editorials like this one, and other means, is happening in partnership with the American Medical Association and is meant to strengthen the bond between patients and their physicians.

David Wroten, AMS executive vice president, has worked with hundreds of physicians and, like me, has witnessed massive changes in healthcare policy. Yet he shared an encouraging constant amid those changes. “Despite changes in healthcare and administrative hurdles, physicians are consistent in their dedication and compassion for physicians. At the end of the day, they want time with patients—to show they care, to help them through whatever medical or personal issue is troubling them, to help them heal.”

My colleague Omar Atiq, MD, MACP, is a full-time physician and distinguished professor of medicine. He has spent his career caring for patients and advocating for equitable healthcare here in Arkansas and nationwide. A past president of the AMS and a recent past president of the American College of Physicians, Dr. Atiq shared his burden over the current healthcare system. “I entered medicine to honor a sacred and transformational covenant with each patient, to care for them with the same dignity, devotion, and compassion I would seek for myself were our roles reversed,” he said. “Over time, increasing intrusion by government and insurers has compromised that bond – at times with tragic consequences.”

Referencing a WHY of the current campaign, AMA President Bobby Mukkamala, MD, shared, “Ensuring physicians have the time to give both personal and physical attention to those that they treat is essential for building a stronger healthcare system – one that supports our current and future physicians, empowers our patients, and bolsters the health of our communities.”

Adam McCall, MD, owner of an independent practice in Fayetteville, wrote something that I wholeheartedly agree with. “When primary care fails, disease is caught late instead of early,” he said. “Emergency rooms replace relationships. Specialists manage problems that should never have progressed this far. Costs rise. Outcomes worsen.

“When primary care finally collapses, it will not be because doctors stopped caring. It will be because caring was made unsustainable.”

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. On behalf of physicians and the patients they are trying so hard to care for, the AMS and the AMA – and physicians like me – must keep fighting for less bureaucracy and more time with patients. Thank you, AMS and AMA, for celebrating the efforts of physicians through the Your Care is At Our Core campaign.

Editor’s note: Sam Taggart, MD, is a career member of the Arkansas Medical Society and a respected Arkansas physician, author, and historian. A retired family physician, he founded Family Practice Associates in Benton, where he practiced for 40 years. The opinions expressed are those of the author.