Q&A: New ACP president pushes for health to be a 'right'

Key takeaways:

• The U.S. health care system is “far behind from where it ought to be,” the new ACP president said.
• To address issues of health care access and equity, ACP has presented and supported several national policies.

In April, Omar T. Atiq, MD, FACP, a professor of medicine and otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, was sworn in as the new president of the ACP.

Before his presidency, Atiq previously served as a member of the ACP’s Board of Regents, chair of the ACP’s Board of Governors, governor of the Arkansas Chapter of ACP, chair of the ACP’s Health and Public Policy Committee and vice-chair of ACP’s Ethics, Professionalism and Human Rights Committee.

Healio spoke with Atiq about his priorities for ACP, what the organization is doing to address some of the top issues in health care and more.

Healio: What are your priorities for ACP?

Atiq: ACP is unique in that its vision, mission and goals are always centered on the patient and patient care. All our offerings, whether those are educational offerings or advocacy offerings ... are geared toward making sure that the patient receives the appropriate care.

We have a system of health and health care in our country that is fragmented and inefficient. We do take care of patients... but if you look at our statistics, our maternal mortality, infant mortality, the burden of preventable illnesses — all the way from infancy to adults — we are far behind from where we ought to be.

The incentives in our system are misaligned with patients’ interests. We don't pay much attention to primary care and public health. We spend too much on administration, especially in the private realm, and there are barriers to care because of poverty, discrimination and equity issues.

So, ACP developed a set of policy papers that envisioned a health care system that addressed all those concerns and others. We looked at the weaknesses in our disjointed system, including systemic discrimination, health care for indigenous people, incarcerated people and minorities in every way and tried to address it.

My goal as president and as an internal medicine physician, is to do whatever I can to push the agenda of efficient, cost effective and patient centered health care forward. The hope is that for our children and grandchildren and future generations, we have a health care system that achieves the goal of a healthy society.

Healio: What is the ACP doing to address some of the biggest topics in health care right now?

Atiq: Within a week after I assumed my responsibilities as the president of ACP, I joined leaders of five other medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Osteopathic Association, the American Association of Family Physicians and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecology to move Congress on our agenda of achieving efficient health care. Together, we represent about 600,000 physicians, which is around 60% of the physician workforce in our country.

We went to Washington, D.C., and met with legislative leadership, specifically asking for them to support policies and laws that have been introduced towards that end. One must have evidence-based policies to be able to successfully implement them. But without implementation, policies may just be intellectual pursuits.

We all met with the congressional legislative leadership urging them to align the incentives in our system towards providing more efficient care, which data will tell you is based on a well-oiled machine of primary care — a primary care team led by a physician, with other health care professionals being integral part of the team... and everybody working together to take care of people to keep them healthy.

A couple of weeks later, we had another day on the hill, the ACP Leadership Day. About 400 physicians from all around the country gathered again to meet legislators from our respective states, both senators and representatives, pushing towards the same goal. We got good responses. Washington works in its own ways at its own time, but we hope that we are making progress, because at the end of the day, health care is neither a Republican nor a Democrat issue. It’s a human issue.

We have also been trying to reduce the administrative burdens for internal medicine physicians, things like prior authorizations, which don’t make sense and cost a lot of time and money and sometimes actually are detrimental to patient health. The cost of medicines and medical devices and the cost of health care in general need to be addressed. We are trying to see how we can provide not just insurance coverage but also easy access to health care for people who don’t have the resources for it.

Healio: What personal goals do you hope to achieve while you serve in this role?

Atiq: When you represent an organization, you are committed and obligated towards the mission, goals, and policies of the organization. If there are personal goals, those become subservient to the organization’s. My personal push, within the realm of what I have just said, is to push for, encourage and support a premise where health, maintenance of good health, prevention of disease and treatment or management of disease is accepted as a human right.

My goal is to advance the concept of a healthy population and a universal, efficient health care system translating into a happier and prosperous nation is easily understood and accepted by all. If I could, to where we tie the ethical and moral obligation of all of us together to ensure that all those around us, in a circle as big as we wish, that those moral and ethical obligations of trying to take care of each other, of trying to prevent illness and injury ... is intertwined with the financial well-being of the nation.

I believe that a healthy nation and healthy individuals of a nation who are not worried about their health and health care, a nation that actively promotes healthy living for everybody — no exclusions, no exceptions — and then provides necessary health care to those who are injured or get sick, is a construct which would not only improve our health, happiness and longevity but would also be an engine for economic development, even more than what we have seen thus far. I would like to see that happen, and in my own way within the constraints of the system, I plan to promote that.

Reference:

• Governance leadership. https://www.acponline.org/about-acp/who-we-are/leadership/governance-leadership. Accessed June 19, 2023.