US Advocacy

US Advocacy Committee

To identify public policy issues and concerns affecting CMR professionals and our patients in the United States.

Chair: Ibrahim Saeed
Vice Chair: Robert Biederman
Past Chair: Edward (Ted) Martin
Board Liaison: Karen Ordovas

Ahmed Sami Abuzaid
Chiara Bucciarelli-Ducci
Victor Ferrari
Mark Fogel
Anthon Fuisz
Cristina Fuss
James Goldfarb
Nazia Husain
Arun Iyer
Ron Jacob
Carrie Kovar

Anupam Kumar
Pankaj Mathur
Michael Morris
Vidya Nadig
Kim-Lien Nguyen
Jonathan Pan
Anu Rao
Michael Salerno
Sharath Subramanian
Asha Vaikom House
Pamela Woodard

SCMR Earns Admission to AMA House of Delegates

After nearly two decades of service representing SCMR to the American Medical Association (AMA), Dr. Edward “Ted” Martin, MSCMR, attended the AMA Specialty and Service Society (SSS) meeting for the last time, because, in June 2023, SCMR was granted formal membership to the coveted AMA House of Delegates (HOD). For the first time (but we hope not last), Dr. Martin picked up his delegate badge and participated in HOD business. This involves lengthy review of AMA HOD materials and voting on numerous matters brought to the HOD.

SCMR has been fortunate to have Dr. Martin as a representative. Among his many accolades are having served as Governor for the Oklahoma Chapter of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), and he is former chair of the SCMR US Advocacy Subcommittee (now Ibrahim Saeed MD, FACC, FSCMR). Most relevant to SCMR, Dr. Martin worked on the initial CPT codes in Cardiac and Vascular MR and worked tirelessly to negotiate the highest imaging Relative Value Units (RVUs) possible. As a result, he has already worked with several of the American College of Radiology’s AMA delegation.

SCMR membership in the AMA HOD provides the following benefits:

  1. More opportunities to advocate for appropriate policy regarding imaging utilization.
  2. Networking opportunities within the houses of cardiology, radiology, and other specialties regarding imaging policies.
  3. Leveling the playing field for SCMR to be represented with nuclear cardiology, electrophysiology, interventional, echocardiography, and CT.
  4. Opportunities to join AMA in communications with members of Congress, top regulators and payers.
  5. SCMR will also obtain advisor status to the AMA CPT & Relative Value Scale Update (RUC) Advisory Committee. CPT Advisors give advice on procedure coding and appropriate nomenclature. RUC Advisors assist the AMA RUC in developing recommendations to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on the RVUs to be assigned to new or revised CPT codes.

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