Post by Stephanie Benson, Associate Program Director
Physicians are advocates. Even when we don’t realize it or don’t plan for it, our voices are often listened to, even by those who may ultimately disagree with us. We should acknowledge the privilege that our education and training grants us and use it for the betterment of our communities. It is for these reasons a knowledge of policy and willingness to participate in its development are both important for physicians in training. Our program has developed a health policy rotation to teach our residents how to use their voices and engage on local, state, and national levels. As part of this rotation we participate in events sponsored by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), both the state chapter and the national organization.
One such event is the Family Medicine Advocacy Summit (FMAS). The FMAS is an annual event typically held by the national academy in Washington DC. During the FMAS family physicians travel from all over the United States to learn about advocacy and meet with their Senators and Representatives. The past two years this event has been transitioned to a virtual platform due to the need for COVID safety. We incorporated participation in the FMAS into the Health Policy rotation this past spring I was able to have residents join me for these meetings. Prior to the FMAS the AAFP legislative staff chooses key issues for discussion with the legislators and or their staffers. The staff prepare one-pagers with talking points for each issue guide our conversations.
This past FMAS the AAFP focused their advocacy on three main issues. The first was Medicaid payment for Primary Care. Medicaid payment rates are set by individual states as a percentage of the payments allowed by Medicare. On average nationally, Medicaid only pays about 66% of Medicare allowable. In NM we are in better shape with Medicaid paying 91% of Medicare rates. Still, these low payment rates affect access to care for some of our neediest patients as providers all over the country make decisions to not take Medicaid patients into their practices. This needs to change and federal legislation could require states to pay for at least primary care services at 100% of Medicare allowable. We were able to discuss this issue with both our Senators and our Representatives and encouraged our Representatives to cosponsor HR 1025, the Kids’ Access to Primary Care Act, that would help accomplish this goal.
Second, we discussed telehealth. Telehealth became exceedingly important to patients and providers during the pandemic and the AAFP is joining other medical organizations asking Congress to make permanent certain allowance that were enacted during the pandemic to eliminate geographic and site restriction on telehealth services as these allowances increased access to primary care for poor, marginalized, and rural Americans.
Third, we asked that Congress pass legislation to allow high deductible health plans to waive deductibles for primary care services as the CARES Act had done temporarily for telehealth services. We were able to have productive conversations with healthcare staffs for each of our legislators on both sides of the political spectrum. I look forward to continuing these efforts over the coming year and am excited to share this knowledge and these experiences with future residents.