ASRA Pain Medicine Joined the House of Delegates this Morning

The American Medical Association (AMA) officially inducted ASRA Pain Medicine into the House of Delegates (HOD) this morning at its annual meeting. This important advancement enables ASRA Pain Medicine to further expand its members’ priorities in important decisions that affect physician practice and patient care. 

As the AMA’s legislative and policy-making body, the HOD represents more than 190 state medical associations and national medical specialty societies along with AMA sections, national societies, professional interest medical associations, and federal services, including the Public Health Service. ASRA Pain Medicine was among four societies that will now have delegates.

“I am thrilled that ASRA Pain Medicine can now fully represent the evolving field of pain medicine, with our focus on the entire continuum of pain,” ASRA Pain Medicine President Samer Narouze, MD, PhD, said.

AMA represents physicians with a “unified voice in courts and legislative bodies across the nation, removing obstacles that interfere with patient care, leading the charge to prevent chronic disease and confront public health crises, and driving the future of medicine to tackle the biggest challenges in health care and training the leaders of tomorrow,” according to the organization.

AMA’s system of governance and policy making include the board of trustees, House of Delegates, executive vice president, councils and committees, special sections, and AMA senior leadership and staff.

“ASRA Pain Medicine will be the formal voice of regional anesthesia and acute pain at the AMA HOD and will collaborate with other societies to promote the field of pain medicine,” Narouze explained.

As a member of the HOD, ASRA Pain Medicine agrees is to keep delegates fully informed on policy positions and report on and disseminate information on actions taken by the HOD at each meeting. By having a seat on the HOD, ASRA Pain Medicine will:

• Have access to information about proposed policy positions that face its membership
• Advocate for policy positions that best represent the interests of the membership and acute and chronic pain physician community
• Educate other members of the HOD about key issues facing the ASRA Pain Medicine membership to stimulate collaboration and meaningful solutions to benefit patient care across the nation.

David Provenzano, MD, Pain Diagnostics and Interventional Care, Pittsburgh, PA, and Gary Schwartz, MD, Maimonides Medical Center, New York, NY, have been appointed to serve as delegates to the HOD.

To be eligible for the HOD seats, ASRA Pain Medicine was required to provide membership information documenting that at least 1,000 members were also members of the AMA or at least 100 individual members plus 20% of overall membership were also members of the AMA. To be eligible, a society must also participate in the Specialty and Service Society (SSS) for a minimum of three years. ASRA Pain Medicine fulfilled these criteria and was inducted this year in conjunction with the AMA Annual Meeting, June 10-15 in Chicago, IL.

Learn more about the AMA HOD here.

House of Medicine Delegates

David Provenzano, MD, and Gary Schwartz, MD