Sunday, November 24, 2019

The AMA and ABMS Member Boards: Banking on the Promise of Private Equity

Recently, I was sent a prospectus for a medical device company that caught the eye of a local Venture Capital funding group. On that prospectus was this paragraph for a "vision" of future of a "clinical decision support system:"
Collects data from the electronic medical record, medical literature, regulatory warnings and other internet-based public information. Provides analysis of intra-procedural progress that integrates this data with procedural imaging and patient status. Includes predictive analytics with the use of cognitive computing to support optimal clinical decision making."
This pitch was little more than a marketed promise of artificial intelligence, of instant processing of black-box algorithms, of equity funding to solve healthcare's less-than optimal patient outcomes using the internet, numbers, cut-copy-and-paste data entry, physician testing scores, in one big algorithmic, dehumanized, robotic mess.

In short, this is what health care market investors see now: a vision where fewer staff, more data entry, and less humanity and human touch are sold as better health care. Worse still, working physicians who remain are being grown and matured in a muzzled petri dish where dissent is openly discouraged by employers and "certifying" bodies.

This data-driven model didn't work out so well for Boeing.

And it won't work so well for health care either.

But don't tell that to the American Medical Association. Because to the AMA, working physicians in the US are little more than data entry ports "Moving Medicine" toward the AMA's latest vision for a business-oriented private equity-driven health care model for tomorrow.

-Wes

3 comments:

Another AMA Delegate Resolution Buried in the Basement? said...

Everyone is sick and tired of coverup stories and disinformation campaigns.

Physicians have had it with being duped/played - turned into indentured servants for the ABMS/ACGME. (MOC)/

The public has had it with the deleterious results; the harm done to them via the AMA/ABMS private equity, special interests continuum.

MOC is a big part of the AMA/ABMS investment portfolio and many of their present and future business plans hinge on keeping the status quo.

That is why the AMA House of Delegates resolution to end MOC was altered, ignored and then quietly vetoed by the ABMS/ACGME/AMA for their own personal gains and the bottom lines of their corporate sponsors and fully-vested private equity partners.

The harm MOC does was buried in the studies on burnout/patient access bottlenecks along with the resolution to keep private equity (and other conflicted influences) out of the docotor's office.

A lot is buried in the AMA's basement - along with the damning fact that private equity has already been clandestinely seated in executive positions at the ABMS by obscenely-paid (proxy) executives.

Plus the AMA convened trade association - PCPI - secretively meets in behalf of special interests groups, payers, large health systems, and the health-tech industry right in the same offices of the ABMS! Suite 1400!

The AMA has a sullied history from the days of creating doctors of war (civil war) instead of advocating for peace/reconciliation to the early 20th century creation of their "bureau of investigations" to bully competition out of business to today where they turn a blind eye on medical specialty boards' persecution of physicians with monopolisitic powers to entrap diplomates/candidates into being policy-compliant sheep, subjected to endless abuse and disregard for autonomy and constitutional rights. Read Dr. Wes' Medicine's House of Cards.

The facts are only just now beginning to come to light how the ABMS/ACGME and AMA are maligning physicians' rights with one hand and "advocating" for them with the other.

If the left hand is dirty, so is the right.

Anonymous said...


Physicians hate the ABMS' self-dealing, longitudinal financial improprieties and political machinations. The DOJ could score a big win fighting the corruption in healthcare right now. If they start with the ABMS, they will see that most of the dirty roads in healthcare quality assurance/education lead to the ABMS and their partners.

Unknown said...

"Everyone is sick and tired" and "Physicians hate"... the ABMS is true enough. But ask yourself this, have they (and you) refused to participate further in the MOC racket, "lost" ABMS certification as a result, obtained NBPSAS certification and dealt with the consequences? If they (and you) have not so alleviated their (and your) suffering and in so doing struck a blow against this obscene purveyor of injustice, they (and you) continue to support the rotten ABMS edifice on your backs. I have and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The sooner they (and you) deprive the racketeers of your hard earned money the better, for all of us and our patients.