Tuesday, June 28, 2011

AMA's membership decline

---has been talked about for years. This piece from Medpage Today is a little dated but is the best summary I could find about it:


Although the group boasts close to 240,000 members, 29% are students or residents, who pay sharply discounted dues. Still more of the members are retirees, whose dues are also cut...
Of those members, 20.5% are medical students, 9% are residents, and 36.5% are 56 or older. As one delegate put it, "we have a lot of students and a lot of old docs, but not a lot of practicing physicians."


Declining membership and diminishing relevance. Most in the rank-and-file, I suspect, would tell you AMA no longer represents their professional interests. Why? According to these posts the AMA repeatedly capitulates to increased government intrusion because they are conflicted: beholden to the government for their coding business. How so? AMA holds the copyright to the codes and CMS mandates them. There you go.

2 comments:

james gaulte said...

But at least they are vigorously working for social justice.

Anonymous said...

The AMA has lost touch with the practicing physician. I belonged to the AMA for 40 plus years, but no more! We need the House of Medicine to look under the bus, where the AMA threw us. ARH