AMA RFS June Meetings Attended by MMA-RFS Delegation

June 24, 2022

Introduction to AMA Annual Meetings 2022: 
On June 10-15, 2022, the AMA held its Annual Meeting of the House of Delegates (HOD) in Chicago, representing the first in-person meeting since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

The Annual HOD Meetings bring together a community of roughly 700 passionate elected individuals (medical students, residents, fellows, and physicians representing state or national societies) to review resolutions and vote in elections of new members, with the goal of implementing new AMA policies that will impact physicians, patients, and the health care system at large.  

Resolutions are policy proposals containing background information and reasoning written by members that ask the RFS or AMA to take a position and/or an action. A Reference Committee then reviews resolutions and provides commentary on improvements and amendments to the resolution. At the Annual Meetings, delegates and alternate delegates review and debate the resolutions and suggested amendments, then vote on whether the resolutions should be adopted, adopted with amendments, or not adopted into RFS positions or AMA policy. 

RFS group and MMA individuals who represented at AMA Annual HOD meeting  

The MMA Residents and Fellows Section (RFS) leaders who attended this annual conference were Daniel Pfeifle, MD; Rebecca Yao, MD, and Ashley Nadeau, MD.  

Pfeifle is a member of the AMA RFS Governing Council where he served as the alternative delegate for the 2021-2022 term and leads the MMA RFS Delegates Council. He is a PGY-3 resident in internal medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. During the AMA Annual 2022 HOD meeting he was re-elected for the AMA Governing Council as delegate in 2022-2023 term! 

Yao is a member of the MMA RFS Governing Council Public Health Committee as a delegate for 2022. She is a PGY-1 resident in internal medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. She attended the AMA RFS HOD meeting as the delegate representing the MMA and voted at the AMA Annual Meeting.  

Nadeau is a member of the MMA RFS Governing Council as an at-large representative ex officio voting member. She is a PGY-2 resident in occupational and environmental medicine at HealthPartners/University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. She was in attendance at the AMA RFS Annual HOD meeting as an Alternative Delegate and actively participated on the floor debates.  

Unable to attend the AMA Annual 2022 meeting were Alex Buchholz, MD, the AMA RFS delegation chair as well as AMA RFS Delegation Vice Chair Natalie Rea, MD.  Buchholz is a PGY-1 resident in emergency medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, and Rea is a PGY-4 resident in anesthesiology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. 

Overview of AMA RFS content and contributions 
This year the AMA House of Delegates considered 49 reports and reviewed 232 resolutions. The RFS Assembly considered five reports and nine resolutions during the RFS Section meeting, including the following pressing and timely resolutions:  

• Protection of reproductive rights  
  • On the precipice of a landmark Supreme Court decision that threatens to overturn abortion rights, the RFS discussed an urgent resolution to preserve access to reproductive health services. In recognition that many states would make abortion immediately illegal if Roe v. Wade were overturned, the conversation focused on AMA’s position to oppose limitations on access to evidence-based reproductive health services and advocate for legal protections for those who provide or receive these services.  
• Opposition to a Resolution Committee 
  • An emergent resolution was filed just prior to the HOD meeting in response to a recent resolution considered during the November 2021 Special Meeting, wherein the formation of a Resolution Committee was proposed. Though proposed with the intention of increasing the efficiency of the resolution process by filtering out certain proposals, such a committee would have led to the discarding of resolutions prior to being heard, stifling debate and the democratic process. 
• Seasonal time changes 

  • With support from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the RFS adopted a resolution supporting year-round standard time by eliminating daylight savings time, also known as the “Sunshine Protection Act” proposed in Congress.  

• Scope creep and preservation of physician leadership in patient care 
  • This year, the AMA produced the Recovery Plan for America’s Physicians with five key positions, one of which targets scope creep. The RFS was consistent in its position to denounce referring to physicians as “providers” due to its generalized and nondescript concept. Additional resolutions supported the creation of a national targeted ad campaign to educate the public about the training pathway differences between physicians compared to non-physician providers. 
• Assessing humanitarian impact of economic policy or sanctions 
  • Economic sanctions can directly threaten public health and safety of targeted and vulnerable populations. The RFS hopes to promote more ethical awareness of the humanitarian impact of these decisions on public health and wellbeing. 
• Solutions for unmatched medical graduates 
  • The RFS had an extensive discussion regarding this resolution, and ultimately landed on agreeing to study potential alternative patient care pathways for unmatched graduates. 

Other topics were also discussed at the meeting, including health care access and cost concerns, firearm legislation, and social and racial justice issues.  

Key Takeaways  
This year’s Annual Meeting marked the first in-person event for two years, and many speakers highlighted the background policy work that has accumulated in the meantime. Despite this, members were eager as ever to move the needle on these important issues. We left the meeting inspired by the activism and advocacy displayed in our colleagues and hope to lead more resident-led policy proposals and initiatives from the MMA. 

(Image caption: Left to right: Rebecca Yao, MD, Dan Pfeifle, MD and Ashley Nadeau, MD, at the 2022 AMA RFS June meetings representing the MMA-RFS)