The ACR has not proposed a unique and comprehensive plan for reform, but it has crafted a series of position statements that emphasize the importance of patient access to appropriate care. Arguably we should be doing more to provide a prescription that would effectively treat HCSD, and this is an ongoing challenge for several of the College’s standing committees, the ACR board, and the officers. In attempting to tackle HCSD, we need to focus on changes that produce increased value from healthcare expenditures. To do this we need to be willing to take on the issue of how much of the healthcare dollar is consumed by administrative costs and the costs of competitive behavior of health systems—both those that are openly “for profit” and those that are supposedly nonprofit but that behave otherwise. And what about pharmaceutical prices, and the degree to which these prices are driven up by marketing costs—and not just marketing to consumers but also to physicians?
Any reforms that we advocate, especially those that could benefit our specialty and our members, must also be in the best interest of our patients. This has always been the policy of the ACR and must continue as a guiding principle that underlies all of our positions. And we need to be realistic about the role of a relatively small subspecialty society in tackling the “macro” issues inherent in HCSD. At times our interests and those of our patients are best served by our participation in collaborative advocacy within larger professional organizations such as the AMA, which is clearly on record concerning the need to abolish the SGR. However, often we do need to act on our own.
Get involved
To learn more about the ACR’s advocacy activities and find out how you can get involved, visit the political advocacy section of the ACR Web site, www.rheumatology.org.
The past few years have seen a significant augmentation of the ACR’s advocacy activities: repeated visits to Capitol Hill by ACR officers, board and committee members, and other ACR members with an interest in advocacy; greatly increased allocations for professional lobbying and advocacy counsel; and the formation of RHEUMPAC. Concurrently, the ACR has worked hard to develop our relationships with federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services. We speak clearly, consistently, and coherently on the range of issues that are important to our members, including our clinical practitioners and our academic researchers. And we communicate much more with each other, whether on the advocacy list serve or in the pages of The Rheumatologist.
