On pandemic's second anniversary, AMA president names five actions U.S. should take to fix health system
In a candid discussion of COVID-19’s toll on American lives, the medical workforce and the loss of public trust in science and medicine, American Medical Association President Gerald Harmon named five actions the AMA recommends to rebuild trust and repair the nation’s ailing health system at a virtual National Press Club Headliner event Thursday.
As the United States marks the second anniversary this month of its first known death to the pandemic, Harmon called the pandemic “a heartbreaking tragedy that is unlike anything we have experienced in our lifetimes.” He said the nation is suffering “a type of battle fatigue from our long fight with COVID-19.”
“The full impact of this pandemic on our national psyche may not be known until long after this difficult period ends.”
To speed an end to that difficult period and better respond to the next health emergency, Harmon cited the five actions the AMA urges:
-Enhancing state and federal stockpiles of medically necessary supplies by working with federal agencies public private partnerships to quickly accelerate production.
-Significantly boosting funding to bolster the nation’s diminished public health infrastructure.
-Learning from Operation Warp Speed, the process that led to the rapid-scale production of several safe and highly effective vaccines. Harmon called it one of the greatest scientific achievements of our lifetime.
-Rapidly expanding and integrating telehealth and remote patient care. AMA strongly supports the Telehealth Modernization Act and applauds its inclusion in the second Cures Act.
-Pausing to consider the extraordinary pressure the nation’s physicians and health care workers have shouldered they last two years, often becoming targets of violence and intimidation.
A retired two-star Air Force general who became AMA’s 176th president last June, Harmon said COVID-19 is just one of two epidemics. The other pandemic, he said, is the “profound loss of trust in the advice of experts, including doctors and scientists, to help us make sense of what’s happening and make informed decisions about our health.”
In his view, “extreme polarization during this crisis has profoundly hampered our nation’s ability to respond. It is a major reason why the U.S. has a far higher death rate from COVID-19 compared to other well-resourced countries.”
He described six “well-documented missteps” contributing to public mistrust: inadequate funding of pandemic preparedness and public health agencies; unclear lines of responsibility; uneven use of federal authority to produce masks and PPE as well as testing and supplies; mixed messaging on masks, social distancing, isolation and quarantine; political – and even personal -- attacks on scientists and physicians; and most recently an inadequate response to the Omicron surge, and a shortage of tests more than 18 months into the pandemic.
Focusing on blame is futile, he said. Instead, he urged focusing on learning from mistakes and rebuilding lost trust. He said that voices spreading “easily disproven and blatantly false information online” should be countered. To his surprise, Harmon said, some of the loudest purveyors of junk science and misinformation come from “a very small number of doctors and health professionals.”
That’s why the AMA is asking state medical boards to act swiftly when physicians spread misinformation online and through the media, especially virus-related. Not an advocate of revoking licenses, he favors holding doctors accountable for what they say.