The American Medical Association is a powerful organization that brings together doctors nationwide to work on the most important professional and public health issues. Its mission is to promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health. The AMA is a member-based, non-profit group that provides a wide range of services including policy advocacy, medical education, physician resources and research. It is a leader on important issues such as prior authorization, scope of practice, telehealth and Medicare reform. Its policies are decided through a democratic policy-making process, the AMA House of Delegates, and its activities with for-profit entities follow AMA guidelines for corporate relationships. The AMA also works closely with physicians, health systems and government to advance efforts that support the practice of medicine.
In 1847, the AMA was founded amid a climate of racial tension and debate over slavery. Although it did not explicitly disallow African Americans from becoming members, incidents at the AMA’s national meetings resulted in a policy that effectively excluded them. Despite these hurdles, the AMA eventually came to embrace a broader vision of social change and began working to raise medical schools’ standards, to address the effects of poverty on health, and to engage in dialogue with the wider community.
As the AMA’s role changed, its membership became more diverse and the organization became more influenced by outside forces. The AMA was increasingly seen as being in the hands of special interests, corporations and the federal government. This eroded the standing of physicians in society and the quality of the doctor-patient relationship.
Today’s doctor association faces a similar challenge: preserving the profession’s cultural authority while protecting its members from external pressures. Those pressures include a burgeoning progressivism driven in part by the profession’s newfound diversity, as well as an age-old desire for greater economic security and control of their careers.
The AMA’s decision to endorse physician unionization signals a significant shift in the association’s position. The AMA is one of the largest and most historically influential physician organizations in America, but it is no longer the only one. Many state and specialty societies have grown to the point where they are as politically influential or more so than the AMA.
To help counter this trend, the AMA has encouraged state and specialty societies to form joint political action committees to support lawmakers who defend democracy. Medical-association staff should use the personal relationships they have built with legislators to communicate how serious they are about the need for all doctors to support laws that safeguard the rights of their patients and their communities. They should also emphasize the importance of personally supporting lawmakers who have supported the ADA’s ratification and the protection of election integrity. They should encourage their colleagues to join them. The AMA’s support of physician unionization is a first step toward restoring the AMA’s reputation as a democratically-based organization that protects physicians’ rights. This article originally appeared on The New York Times.