The American Medical Association is calling for urgent action to address what it says is a broken Medicare payment system.

AMA highlighted challenges physician practices have faced in recent years, including the COVID pandemic, inflation and the growing cost of running a business. Amid this, Medicare has “failed to respond,” with medical doctors absorbing a 2% pay cut for 2023, the association said Monday.

When adjusting for inflation, Medicare physician payment actually dropped 26% between 2001 to 2023, AMA said, quoting a commonly cited statistic.

“This cannot wait; we are past the breaking point. Congress must urgently address physician concerns about Medicare to account for inflation and the post-pandemic economic reality facing practices nationwide,” AMA President Jack Resneck Jr., MD, said in a statement. “Our patients are counting on us to deliver the message that access to healthcare is jeopardized by Medicare’s payment system. Being mad isn’t enough.”

The association said it plans to develop a targeted, grassroots campaign to help drive this message home to lawmakers. AMA is pushing for the passage of the Strengthening Medicare for Patients and Providers Act, introduced by bipartisan members of the U.S. House in April. The bill proposes to provide a permanent annual inflationary physician payment update tied to the Medicare Economic Index. AMA, the American College of Radiology, the Society of Interventional Radiology and more than 100 other professional associations voiced their support for the measure the same month it was introduced.

Absent any action from Congress, the association is concerned about the physician workforce’s future.

“We are deeply worried that many practices will be forced to stop taking new Medicare patients—at a time when access to care is already inadequate,” Resneck said. “Duct-taping the widening cracks of a dilapidated payment system has put us in this precarious situation,” he added later. “Physicians are united in our determination to build a solid foundation rather than further jury-rigging the system.”

Other news

In other news from the AMA House of Delegates meeting, which wrapped up on June 13:

• The association announced its board of trustees for 2023-2024, including two radiologists who returned as members: Alexander Ding, MD, MBA, of Kentucky, and Scott Ferguson, MD, from Arkansas.
• The House of Delegates adopted a policy calling for more oversight of insurers who use artificial intelligence to make prior authorization determinations. A ProPublica investigation recently revealed that during a two-month period last year, Cigna denied more than 300,000 claims via AI, with its doctors spending 1.2 seconds on each case.
• In other AI news, AMA also said it is developing recommendations related to the benefits and consequences of relying on machine-generated medical advice.
• Delegates also approved a resolution opposing noncompete contracts for physicians in clinical practice who are employed by hospitals, health systems or staffing company employers.
• And finally, Wisconsin anesthesiologist Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, was inaugurated as the 178th president of the AMA and first ever openly gay person to fill the role.