McAneny to be installed as AMA president
ABQ-based oncologist to serve one-year term
Albuquerque-based oncologist Dr. Barbara McAneny, CEO and co-founder of the New Mexico Cancer Center, will be inaugurated as the president of the American Medical Association on Tuesday.
She will serve a one-year term as the head of the largest doctors’ organization in the country, a powerful lobbying group in Washington. The AMA is behind about $380 million in lobbying expenditures over the past decade, the third-highest sum of any group, according to OpenSecrets.org.
McAneny said her agenda is extensive and interrelated. She pointed to health-care payment systems as a topic she is particularly passionate about addressing.
“The AMA wants doctors all across the country to say, ‘If I could spend a little money on this particular thing for my patients, I could manage some of these poverty-related issues,’ and make that happen” said McAneny.
She said the 2015 repeal of the sustainable growth rate formula — a method used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to cap Medicare payments for doctors — is an example of the type of payment system reform supported by the AMA.
At the annual AMA meeting that begins on Saturday, the organization will consider backing several gun control policies, such as one that allows law enforcement to remove a firearm from an individual’s possession “when there is a high or imminent risk for violence.” The AMA already supports background checks and a waiting period for all purchasers, among several
other policies, according to information provided by a spokesman.
“The AMA has long had a policy saying gun violence is a public health issue,” said McAneny. “Here in New Mexico, we lose a classroom full of kids every year (to gun violence). We just usually do it one kid at a time. It has to stop.”
Regarding the opioid crisis, McAneny said the AMA supports government prescription drug monitoring programs and increasing access to naloxone, a medication used to block the effects of an opioid overdose. It does not support measures such as mandating that doctors provide only three-day supplies of opioids, which McAneny said could create problems for patients in places like New Mexico where patients often have to travel long distances to fill their prescriptions.
McAneny also said she wants to bring some of the organization’s initiatives back home, particularly one focused on the prevention of chronic disease in underserved areas.
“When I look around New Mexico, I see an incredible bunch of doctors struggling with limited resources,” she said. “I’d like to see the AMA extend its reach into communities like ours to see if we can help people.”