AMA Delegates Address Medical Malpractice, Possibility of Medical Personnel Draft

• Medical malpractice: AMA has designated medical liability reform as the group's top legislative priority, according to the Florida Times-Union. Donald Palmisano, AMA's immediate past president, said it is "absolutely essential" that both Congress and state legislatures act to address the issue (Eckenrode, Florida Times-Union, 12/8).
  
  
• Draft: AMA voted in favor of monitoring the possibility of medical personnel being drafted and working with the Selective Service "to address ... questions and concerns regarding implementation of the draft program," the Wall Street Journal reports. Congress in 1987 authorized the Health Care Personnel Delivery System, a little-known contingency plan for drafting medical professionals, "to handle an emergency need for medical personnel during a conflict," the Journal reports. If activated by the president and approved by Congress, the plan would require about 3.4 million male and female health care workers ages 20 to 44 to register with the Selective Service. About 36,000 health care professionals could then be selected in a draft. The Journal reports that the Department of Defense has reiterated that "the military health system has performed 'superbly' in Iraq and Afghanistan and there is no need for a medical draft." A Selective Service newsletter last year and a paper published earlier this year in the Wisconsin Medical Journal both indicated that a medical draft could happen sometime in the future. Some physicians are concerned that a medical draft would weaken hospitals and clinics and exacerbate physician and nurse shortages (Windham, Wall Street Journal, 12/7).